Comparing Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville And Nathaniel Hawthorne

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, all are highly acclaimed American poets of the 19th century, particularly ranging from between the years 1820-1860. Between the years 1820 -1860, is considered as the Romanic Period, which was the follow up from the Romantic Movement that started in Germany. The Romantic Movement surfaced in the America in 1820, and ended up coinciding with the period of national expansion, and the exploration or a unique American identity. American Romanticism played a key element in "the American Renaissance." The Romantic concept accentuated the importance of revealing art for the individual and the community. However, it was communicated through two significant groups of people, who each had their own style and vison but still managed to influence each other.
The first movement was Transcendentalism whose fundamental belief was in the unity of the world and God. The Transcendentalists poet’s romantic ideas surrounded the spiritual and creative dimension of nature along with the use of metaphors. These poets major theme was the development of self, individualism and self- realization. Famous Transcendentalists poets were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
American Transcendental Romantics pushed radical individualism to the extreme.
Both Emerson and Thoreau both lived simple lives, outside of society, both with a passion for the love of nature. However, what divided them were their philosophies. Emerson avoided political affairs. He connected his love of name to spirituality and believed that engaging in political affairs would have interrupted his Romantic belief in intuition and flexibility. Whilst Thoreau on the other hand, loved nature only for its beauty, and although he stayed away from social gatherings, he felt that transcendentalists should unite with the community when it came to political unfairness that affected the society on a
whole.
The second was the Romantic Movement. This movement supported a heightened, emotional, and symbolic form of the novel. It was fiction writing that used special techniques to communicate complex and subtle meanings. Romantic poets during the Romantic era using this movement were Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In their writing, they often used heroic figures larger than life that had a mythic significance, with symbolic plots that exposed concealed actions of the tormented spirit. This is evident in “the Masque of the Red Death” by Poe, “Typee” by Melville and Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.”
Hawthorne was born in Salem Massachusetts, which was notorious of the witch’s trials. Consequently, the majority of Hawthorne’s poems were based Puritan America, of the idea of a family curse. Melville on the other hand, narratives is always based on the mystic vision of facts. Whether the vision is evil or good, human or inhuman is never clarified. Whilst Poe, shares Melville’s dark metaphysical vision, however his is mixed with elements of realism, parody, and burlesque.
The narratives written during the Romantic period was that surrounding the development of America, as in America evolving as a nation, finding its own identity. Whether it was due topography changes or social reform, the writers expressed what was happening around them into writing.