Ms. Tunik's List: Romanticism and Gothicism and Transcendentalism

• few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they  have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but  shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
• who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His  intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the  presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real  sorrows.
• Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky,  without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have  enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods  too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period  soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.
• In the woods, we return to reason and faith.
• There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity,  (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair.
• Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted  into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes.
• I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the  Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
• occult relation between man and the vegetable

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• it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the  representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest  in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of documentary history, and  the influence of rational philosophy all affected the rise of realism
• wrote fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of American  lives in various contexts
• Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are  often the subject
• • Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they  are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to  their own past.
• Class is important
• Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements
• natural vernacular

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