资源描述
Lecture 6Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803-1882)-A key figure of transcendentalismTeaching target and focus:Emersons contribution to the literary world;Emersons major thoughts and his representative works.Group workListen to the tape and answer the questions:1:What contribution had he made to American literary history?2:What was his identity can you guess?The United States had won its independence from Britain just twenty-two years before Ralph Waldo Emerson was born.But it had yet to win its cultural independence.It still took its traditions from other countries,mostly from western Europe.What the American Revolution did for the nations politics,Emerson did for its culture.When he began writing and speaking in the eighteen thirties,conservatives saw him as radical-wild and dangerous.But to the young,he spoke words of self-dependence-a new language of freedom.He was the first to bring them a truly American spirit.He told America to demand its own laws and churches and works.It is through his own works that we shall look at Ralph Waldo Emerson.He was responsible for bringing Transcendentalism to New England.He was recognized throughout his life as the leader of the movementa major American poet?Statesman?Enlightener?Philosopher?Transcendentalist?Lecturer?Bigraphical introduction:p.161 Life and education:born in Boston,Massachusetts.Most of his ancestors were clergymen as his father.He was educated in Boston and Harvard,like his father,and graduated in 1821.While at Harvard,he began keeping a journal,which became a source of his later lectures,essays,and books.In 1825 he began to study at the Harvard Divinity School and next year he was licensed to preach by the Middlesex Association of Ministers.In 1829 Emerson married the seventeen-year-old Ellen Louisa Tucker,who died in 1831 from tuberculosis.Working and traveling experience:worked first as an Unitarian priest.In his hometown,Concord,Emerson founded a literary circle called New England Transcendentalism,a hodgepodge mixture of fashionable thoughts,in which participated among others Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Thoreau.During his travels in England he met Wordsworth,Coleridge,and Thomas Carlyle,with whom he maintained a lifelong correspondence from the 1830s and whose opinions of the importance of great historical figures influenced his own writings.After returning to the United States,he lectured on natural history,biology,and history.Later Emerson became involved in the antislavery movement and worked for womens rights.The change of beliefHe became sole pastor in the Second Unitarian Church in 1830.Three years later he had a crisis of faith,finding that he was not interested in the rite of Communion.He once remarked,that if his teachers had been aware of his true thoughts,they would not have allowed him to become a minister.Eventually Emersons controversial views caused his resignation.However,he never ceased to be both teacher and preacher,although without the support of any concrete idea of God.His lectures The American Scholar(1837)and The Divinity School Address(1838)challenged the Harvard intelligentsia and warned about a lifeless Christian tradition.He was ostracized by Harvard for many years,but his message attracted young disciples such as Henry David Thoreau.Emersons aim was not merely to charm his readers,but encourage them to cultivate self-trust,to become what they ought to be,and to be open to the intuitive world of experience.Emerson encouraged American scholars to break free of European influences and create a new American culture.He had formulated this idea in the mid-1830s in“American Scholar”,which Oliver Wendell Holmes(Sr.)hailed as our intellectual Declaration of Independence.(P.163.)Scholars obligations for ages:p.163Action is with the scholar subordinate,but it is essential.Without it he is not yet man.Without it thought can can ripen into truth.Inaction is cowardice,but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by as a loss of power.He is the worlds eye.He is the worlds heart.These being his functions,it becomes him to feel all confidence in himself,and to defer never to the popular cry.Reading Nature:p.164Para 1:Nature has a restorative,comforting,purifying influence on Men.Para 2:Nature is sublime,respectable,kind,profound and inspiring.Para 3:The definition of Nature.Para 4/5:Men always feel delightful and young in Nature.Para 6:The power of delight resides in men or in a harmony of both.Emersons first book,NATURE,a collection of essays,appeared when he was 33 and summoned up his ideas.Emerson emphasized individualism and rejected traditional authority.He invited us to enjoy an original relation to the universe,and emphasized the infinitude of the private man.All creation is one,he believed-people should try to live a simple life in harmony with nature and with others.Reading:“Self-Reliance”P.167Read the essay and underline some famous quotations or importance sentences.Try to explain them in your own words.论自助.docQuotes from this essayThere is a time in every mans education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance;that imitation is suicide;that he must take himself for better,for worse,as his portion;that though the wide universe is full of good,no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.The power which resides in him is new in nature,and none but he knows what that is which he can do,nor does he know until he has tried.每个人在受教育过程中，总有一天会认识到：妒忌是无知，模仿是自杀。不论好歹，每个人都必须接受属于他的那一份，广阔的世界里虽然充满了珍馐美味，但是只有从给予他去耕耘的那一片土地里，通过辛勤劳动收获的谷物才富有营养。富于他体内的力量，实质上是新生的力量。只有他自己才知道他能干什麽，而且他也只有在尝试之后才能知晓。We but half express ourselves,and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues,so it be faithfully imparted,but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best;but what he has said or done otherwise,shall give him no peace.It is a deliverance which does not deliver.In the attempt his genius deserts him;no muse befriends;no invention,no hope.我们对自己总是遮遮掩掩，对我们每个人所代表的神圣意念感到羞愧。我们完全可以视这意念爲与我们相称、而又有益的意念，所以，应当忠实地宣扬它。不过，上帝是不会向懦夫揭示他的杰作的，只有神圣的人，才能展示神圣的事物。当一个人将身心倾注到工作中，并且竭尽了全力的时候，他就得到了解脱和欢乐。否则，他将爲自己的言行忐忑不安，得到的是没有解脱的解脱。在其问，他爲自己的天赋所抛弃，没有灵感与他爲友，没有发明，也没有希望。Trust thyself:every heart vibrates to that iron string.相信你自己吧：每颗心都随着那弦跳动。Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.社会到处都是防患各社会成员成熟起来的阴谋。What I must do is all that concerns me,not what the people think.我必须做的是一切与我有关的事，而不是别人想要我做的事。A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.愚蠢地坚持随衆随俗是心胸狭小的幽灵的表现，是低级的政客，哲学家和神学家们崇拜的物件。伟大的人物根本就不会随衆随俗。To be great is to be misunderstood.要做个伟人，就一定会被人误解 Insist on yourself;never imitate.Society never advances.It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.The civilized man has built a coach,but has lost the use of his feet.Society is a wave.The wave moves onward,but the water of which it is composed does not.And so the reliance on Property,including the reliance on governments which protect it,is the want of self-reliance.Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.DiscussionMy understanding of“Self-reliance”Listen to the tape about Emerson谢谢
展开阅读全文