Module 2: Introduction

Contemplation and Argumentation

Above and Beyond

Your older sister tries out for cheerleading, is on the honor roll, and runs with the popular crowd. Well, naturally that makes you determined to dye your hair black, remove all color from your wardrobe, and avoid school activities like wool in July. Actions breed reactions. Children always rebel against their older siblings' and parents' beliefs to find their own way in the world.

So it is in the world of literary movements. As formally religious and rigid as the Puritans and colonists were, the Transcendentalists and Romantics were even more free-thinking and open to the possibilities of the world. They envisioned Manifest Destiny and stretched the country to the west. They wrote fiction and poetry that celebrated freedom, nature, self-reliance, and the supernatural. Even the non-fiction of this period was filled with fanciful and ambitious notions like the equality of all men and women of any race.

In this unit you will read Romantic and Transcendental literature from Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and Lydia Marie Child. You will practice the art of persuasion using rhetorical devices, appeals, and refutation while avoiding logical fallacies. And you will enjoy the beauty and wonder of Transcendentalism, as well as the darkness and awe of Romanticism in the early 1800's.

So leave the Puritans in their dark musty attics and open the window as wide as you can to rise above and beyond into possibility and imagination.