Having read Waldo and then Walt, two authors with similar philosophies, it would be interesting to first note some of their differences in personality, and then to consider what they together accomplished, as well as how they fit into the Western literary cannon we have covered in this class.
My first topic has to do with how an author's personality is shown through his/her work. Though both Waldo and Walt were transcendentalists who expressed similar sentiments in their works, the personalities of these two that flowed through their respective writing seemed to me to be drastically different. In addition, I found it much easier to infer the personalities of these two authors than those of authors we have read previously. 1) Did anyone else feel this way? Why might you be able to picture Waldo and Walt's personalities better than, say, Montaigne's, even though his writing was also highly personal and he wrote "an honest book?" Can you always get a glimpse into an author's personality through his work? Could you at all paint me a picture of Shakespeare's personality from reading Hamlet? In this case, what did you feel were the personalities of Waldo and Walt; did they have similar personalities? Or have they merely reached similar philosophical conclusions while having very different personalities?
My second topic has to do with the transcendentalist movement and how it fits into the contexts of the Lit Hum cannon and American history. It is an observed and much studied fact that generally Eastern cultures uphold collectivistic ideals while Western ones, notably the US, uphold the ideal of individualism. In Lit Hum, we have covered from Greek epics to Transcendentalism. 2) At what point in the Lit Hum reading list did this idea of the supremity and importance of the individual (as opposed to those of God, societal duty, or cultural customs as would be stressed in Eastern literature) start to emerge? Do you think Lit Hum works and movements like Transcendentalism were part of the force that pushed America to become the individualistic machine it is today?
Bryan
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