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1、Abstract: American famous writer, Louisa May Alcotts novel Little Women fully reflects the transcendental ideas. This novel based on the American Civil War contains complex cultural contexts and thus, can be read from many perspectives. This thesis attempts to read this novel from the perspective of
2、 Transcendentalism, and try to tap the Transcendentalism embodied in thought, in order to broaden peoples perspective of reading the novel. Transcendentalism promotes the unity of people, God, the spirit of natural, to emphasize the spirit of self and self-reliance. These ideas are reflected in the
3、March sisters growing up and character. March sisters have different personalities and talents, but they focus on their own spirit improvement and strongly maintain the self-reliance and self-independent spirit. Transcendentalism gave the charisma to the March sisters and made the novel won the read
4、ers favorite. In addition, Alcott extended Transcendentalism to women reality in Little Women, and it increases the readability of the novel.Keywords: Little Women; Transcendentalism; Individualism; Self-reliance摘要：美国著名女作家露易莎梅奥尔科特的长篇小说充分体现了超验主义思想.这部以美国南北战争为背景的小说包含着复杂的文化情境，可以从多重视角来解读。 本文试图从超验主义视角解读这篇
5、小说，并尽力挖掘该小说中体现的超验主义思想，以拓宽人们阅读该小说的视野。超验主义宣扬人、神、自然的精神统一，强调精神、自我和自助。这些思想都在马奇姐妹的性格和成长过程中有所体现。马奇姐妹具有不同的性格和才华，但都注重自己的精神提高和完善，并极力保持自助和自我独立的精神。超验主义赋予了马奇姐妹人格魅力，使小说赢得了读者的喜爱。此外奥尔科特在小说中把超验主义延伸到女性现实，这也增加了小说的可读性。关键词：小妇人；超验主义；个人主义；自助 Thesis Statement: This paper discusses the importance of the Transcendentalism in
6、 Little Women and its influence on the minds of the four March daughters.Outline:.The Development of TranscendentalismA. The Connotation of TranscendentalismB. Some Important Comments on Transcendentalism.Transcendentalism in Little WomenA. A Brief Look at the Plot of the Little WomenB. The Reflecti
7、on of Transcendentalism through the Characters in Little Women1. Tomboyish Jo2. Beautiful Meg3. Fragile Beth 4. Romantic Amy5. John Brooke6. Laurence boy.The Influence of Transcendentalism in Little Women on the Future Literature.ConclusionA Transcendental Reading of Little WomenIntroductionLouisa M
8、ay Alcott, the second daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail “Abba” May was born in Germantown, Pennsy1vania on November 29, 1832. Her famous work, Little Women is a novel written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two parts in 1868
9、and 1869. The novel follows the lives of four sistersMeg, Jo, Beth, and Amy Marchand is loosely based on the authors childhood experiences with her three sisters. The first part of the book was an immediate commercial and critical success, prompting the composition of the books second part titled Go
10、od Wives, also a huge success. Both parts were first published as a single volume in 1880. Alcott followed Little Women with two sequels reprising the March sisters, Little Men (1871) and Jos Boys (1886). Little Women has been adapted to play, musical, opera, film, and animated feature.Some scholars
11、 have studied about images in Little Women. They lay particular emphasis on self-dependence and self-discipline in Little Women (许绮，2004：122). From the studies, we can find out that different personalities reflect different outlooks on value and life. The studies only describe what the female images
12、 in Little Women, while this thesis is to attempts to read this novel from the perspective of Transcendentalism, and try to tap the Transcendentalism embodied in thought, in order to broaden peoples perspective of reading the novel.Little Women totally reflects the spirits of transcendentalism. The
13、March sisters in this novel were the classic reflections of self-reliance, individualism and feminism.The Development of Transcendentalism A. The Connotation of TranscendentalismTranscendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in
14、 the early to middle 19thcentury. It is sometimes called American transcendentalism to distinguish it from other uses of the word transcendental. Transcendentalism began as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the
15、doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among transcendentalists core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state that transcends the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individuals intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions. Promin
16、ent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Orestes Brownson, William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, John Sullivan Dwight, Convers Francis, Margaret Fuller, William Henry Furness, Frederick Henry Hedge, Sylvester Judd, Theodore Parker,
17、Elizabeth Peabody, George Ripley, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Jones Very. Others included Amos Bronson Alcott and A.E. Waite.The publication of Ralph Waldo Emersons 1836 essay Nature is usually taken to be the watershed moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. Emerson wrote i
18、n his speech The American Scholar: We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; Divine Soul which also inspires all men. Emerson closed the essay by calling for a revolution in human consciousness to emerge from the new idealist philosophyIn the same year, transcendentalism became
19、a coherent movement with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals including George Putnam, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederick Henry Hedge. From 1840, the group published frequently in their journal The Dial, alo
20、ng with other venues. The movement was originally termed Transcendentalists as a pejorative term, suggesting their position was beyond sanity and reason.The practical aims of the transcendentalists were varied; some among the group linked it with utopian social change and, in the case of Brownson, i
21、t joined explicitly with early socialism, while others found it an exclusively individual and idealist project. Emerson believed the latter. In his 1842 lecture The Transcendentalist, Emerson suggested that the goal of a purely transcendental outlook on life was impossible to attain in practice.By t
22、he late 1840s, Emerson believed the movement was dying out, especially after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850. All that can be said, Emerson wrote, is that she represents an interesting hour & group in American cultivation.1Transcendentalism was rooted in the transcendental philosophy of Immanue
23、l Kant (and of German Idealism more generally), which the New England intellectuals of the early 19th century embraced as an alternative to the Lockean sensualism of their fathers and of the Unitarian church, finding the alternative in Vedic thought, German idealism, and English Romanticism.The tran
24、scendentalists desired to ground their religion and philosophy in transcendental principles: principles not based on or falsifiable by, sensuous experience, but deriving from the inner, spiritual or mental essence of the human. Immanuel Kant had called all knowledge transcendental which is concerned
25、 not with objects but with our mode of knowing objects. The transcendentalists were largely unacquainted with German philosophy in the original, and relied primarily on the writings of Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Victor Cousin, Germaine de Stael, and other English and French commentator
26、s for their knowledge of it. In contrast, they were intimately familiar with the English Romantics, and the transcendental movement may be partially described as a slightly later, American outgrowth of Romanticism. Another major influence was the mystical spiritualism of Emanuel Swedenborg. Thoreau
27、in Walden spoke of the debt to the Vedic thought directly, as did other members of the movement.Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a novel, The Blithedale Romaine (1852), satirizing the movement, and based it on his experiences at Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian community founded on transcendental principl
28、es. Edgar Allan Poe had a deep dislike for transcendentalism, calling its followers Frogpondians after the pond on Boston Common. He ridiculed their writings in particular by calling them metaphor-run, lapsing into obscurity for obscuritys sake or mysticism for mysticisms sake. One of his short stor
29、ies, Never Bet the Devil Your Head, is a clear attack on transcendentalism, which the narrator calls a disease. The story specifically mentions the movement and its flagship journal The Dial, though Poe denied that he had any specific targets. Transcendentalists were strong believers in the power of
30、 the individual and divine messages. Their beliefs are closely linked with those of the Romantics.The movement directly influenced the growing movement of Mental Sciences of the mid 1800s which would later become known as the New Thought movement. New Thought draws directly from the transcendentalis
31、ts, particularly Emerson. New Thought considers Emerson its intellectual father. Emma Curtis Hopkins the teacher of teachers, Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science, The Fillmores, founders of Unity, and Malinda Cramer and Nona L. Brooks, the founders of Divine Science, were all greatly influen
32、ced by Transcendentalism.B. Some Important Comments on TranscendentalismTranscendentalism is an idealistic philosophy that in general emphasizes the spiritual over the material. By its very nature, the movement is hard to describe and its body of beliefs hard to define. Its most important practition
33、er and spokesman in the New England manifestation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, called it the saturnalia or excess of faith. which is popularly called transcendentalism among us, he wrote, is idealism; idealism as it appears in 1842.2 That description mentions two of the very elements, an emphasis upon heig
34、htened spiritual awareness and an interest in various types of philosophical idealism, that make transcendentalism so difficult to describe. In actuality, we cannot speak of a well organized and clearly delineated transcendentalist movement as such. Instead, we find a loosely knit group of authors,
35、preachers, and lecturers bound together by a mutual loathing of Unitarian orthodoxy, a mutual desire to see American cultural and spiritual life freed from bondage to the past, and a mutual faith in the unbounded potential of American democratic life. Located in the Concord, Massachusetts, area in t
36、he years between 1835 and 1860, the transcendentalists formed not a tight group but, rather, a loose federation. Though a movement such as transcendentalism cannot be said to have had one distinct leader, Emerson was clearly its central figure. The publication of his Nature in 1836 is generally cons
37、idered to mark the beginning of an identifiable movement. The next two decades were to see numerous new works from Emerson and poems, essays, and books from other transcendentalist figures, such as Henry David Thoreau, Orestes Bronson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, and Theodor
38、e Parker. Never forming an official affiliation, these figures and others associated with them banded together for the formation of an informal discussion group called the Transcendental Club; the publication of the transcendentalist literary and philosophical journal, The Dial and the establishment
39、 of an experiment in utopian communal living, Brook Farm. One thing almost all those associated with the movement did share, however, was a common heritage of Unitarianism. Perhaps more than anything else, this fact helps to explain the development of transcendentalism and its later and larger signi
40、ficance for American culture. The transcendentalists broke with Unitarianism for two reasons. First, they objected to the Unitarian desire to cling to certain particulars of Christian history and dogma. Emerson called this clinging a noxious exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual, an
41、d he asked instead for a direct access to God, unmediated by any elements of Scripture and tradition. And second, the transcendentalists lamented the sterility of belief and practice they found in the Unitarian faith. According to Thoreau, it is not mans sin but his boredom and weariness that are as
42、 old as Adam. The American Adam needs to exchange his bondage to tradition for a freedom to experiment: old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. In some ways transcendentalism attempted to recapture for the American spirit the fervor of the original Puritan enterprise. That zeal, with its at
43、tendant bliss and agony, had been suppressed or exiled to the wilderness of the American religious experience by the end of the eighteenth century. Transcendentalism was one of the first and most dramatic protests against civil religion in America. Though it did not live up to the expectations of it
44、s adherents, many of them expected nothing less than a total regeneration of social and spiritual life through the application of the principles of idealism in America, transcendentalism has had a lasting impact. In the years immediately preceding the American Civil War, several of the transcendenta
45、lists were important participants in the abolitionist movement, and in the decades to follow, widely divergent individuals and movements would find inspiration in the transcendental protest against society. For example, Henry Ford, who once said that history is bunk and declared Emersons essays to b
46、e his favorite reading, dwelt upon the transcendentalists disdain for convention and their exaltation of self reliant power, while both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King drew deeply upon the resources of Thoreaus famous essay, Civil Disobedience.Perhaps even more significantly, transcendentalism
47、 marked the first substantial attempt in American history to retain the spiritual experience and potential of the Christian faith without any of the substance of its belief. By claiming an essential innocence for man, by substituting a direct intuition of God or truth for any form of revelation, and
48、 by foreseeing a future of ill defined but certain glory for humankind, transcendentalism paved the way for the many romantic notions about human nature and destiny that have become such a central part of the American experience in the last hundred years.Transcendentalism in Little WomenA. A Brief L
49、ook at the Plot of the Little WomenAlcott begins Little Women by invoking John Bunyans 17th century text The Pilgrims Progress. Alcotts except sets the stage for the tone and theme of the events to come in her novel. In fact, the first chapter of Little Women is entitled Playing Pilgrim. It is no coincidence that Alcott would choose The Pilgrims Progress as the work which woul
