Cliffsnotes On Thoreau Emerson And Transcendentalism

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format. CliffsNotes on Thoreau, Emerson, and Transcendentalism explores in depth, but also in easy-to-understand terms, transcendentalism—the religious, political, and literary movement that captured the minds of such literary figures as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the first half of the 19th century. This guide helps you to understand the various tenets of transcendentalism, as well as how Thoreau and Emerson became the two most well-known figures associated with the movement and how the transcendentalist philosophy is reflected in their work. In addition to introducing you to the basics of understanding transcendentalism, this guide also gives you the following: Examinations of the lives of Thoreau and Emerson Detailed summaries of and commentaries on many of their transcendentalist writings, such as Emerson's Nature and Thoreau's Walden Critical essays on Emerson and Thoreau's reputation and influence A review section that tests your knowledge A Resource Center full of books, articles, and Internet sites Classic literature or modern-day treasure—you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience: This is Thoreau's classic protest against government's interference with individual liberty. One of the most famous essays ever written, it came to the attention of Gandhi and formed the basis for his passive resistance movement.

Thoreau wrote Civil Disobedience in 1849. It argues the superiority of the individual conscience over acquiescence to government. Thoreau was inspired to write in response to slavery and the Mexican-American war. He believed that people could not be made agents of injustice if they were governed by their own consciences.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Thoreau's account of his solitary and self-sufficient home in the New England woods remains an inspiration to the environmental movement - a call to his fellow men to abandon their striving, materialistic existences of 'quiet desperation' for a simple life within their means, finding spiritual truth through awareness of the sheer beauty of their surroundings.

I greet you on the re-commencement of our literary year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not meet for games of strength or skill, for the recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the Troubadours; nor for the advancement of science, like our cotemporaries in the British and European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. As such, it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come, when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids, and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions, that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. Who can doubt, that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years?

"This drama opens with Thoreau in jail for refusing to pay taxes to a government conducting a war of aggression in Mexico, at midpoint shows Emerson visiting him, and ends on the morning of his release."--Publisher's website.