Emily Dickinson: Transcendentalist Experience Through Imagination :: essays research papers

Emily Dickinson Transcendentalist Experience Through ImaginationThe early 19th century ideas of transcendentalism, which were introducedby Ralph Emerson and David Thoreau, where man as an individual becomesspiritu exclusivelyy consumed with spirit and himself through experience are contrastedby Emily Dickinson, who chose to branch off this path by showing that atranscendentalist experience could be achieved through imagination alone. Thesethree monumental writers set the boundaries for this new realm of thought.Although these writers ideas were not similar, they all followed the simple ideathat the universe is still of Nature and the Soul . The male perspectiveseen through the works of Thoreau and Emerson, where nature refers to essencesunchanged by man the air, the river, the leaf , is revised and satirized byDickinsons statement that Of all the Souls that stand create-, I have elected-One . Dickinsons works were meant to taunt society by showing how a woman,ironically trapped in her natural purlieu of the home, could obtain asmuch power, if not more than any male writer. This ironic revisions of ideas isdirected at all male transcendentalists and figures in society.Both Ralph Emerson and David Thoreau employ societies stereotype of the dead on target male environment, nature, to draw their power and write from theirexperiences. Experience was the most important factor to these writers. Theability to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account in my nextexcursion was the basis of all their writings. To get the whole and genuinemeanness of it, and introduce its meanness to the whole world was their goalbehind all their writings. They did not use their power of writing in order togain a transcendentalist experience, exclusively rather to record them. Both Emersonand Thoreau chose to contact their true natural surroundings, and experiencetime alone in the woods. By being in purdah, it brought forth aconciseness that all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mindis open to their influence .Mans views of nature being rightfully his, to do with what he wants, isharshly contrasted by Emerson, who feels that Nature sais,-He is my creature .Emerson felt that man, corrupted by society, can over power the fate of overlooking his true meaning. Escaping from the wheel of society into the woods, isperpetual youth. By living in the woods, he found that fusing nature with soul,one can accomplish anything.Emerson felt that nature was an extension of five of his senses, wherehe could feel the tree moving in the wind as if it was his own body.