The Use of Transcendentalism in Walt Whitman’s song
1. The use of
Transcendentalism in
Walt Whitman’s song
of Myself
• Name: Panchasara Jignesh k.
• Roll no: 8
• Enrollment No: 3069206420200013
• Paper No: 8 American Literature
• Batch: 2020-2022
• Email : jigneshpanchasara5758@gmail.com
• Submitted To: S.B. Gardi Department of
English MKBU
2. What is
Transcendentalism?
• It’s all about spirituality.
Transcendentalism is a
philosophy that began in
the mid-19th century and
whose founding members
included Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Henry David
Thoreau. It centers around
the belief that spirituality
cannot be achieved through
reason and rationalism, but
instead through self-
reflection and intuition.
3. Continue…..
• In other words, transcendentalists believe
spirituality isn’t something you can explain; it’s
something you feel. A transcendentalist would
argue that going for a walk in a beautiful place
would be a much more spiritual experience than
reading a religious text.
• Great man are they who see the spiritual stronger
than any material force, that thoughts rule the
world.
Ralph waldo Emerson
5. Walter Whitman
• Walter Whitman was an American poet,
essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he
was a part of the transition between
transcendentalism and realism,
incorporating both views in his works.
Whitman is among the most influential
poets in the American canon, often called
the father of free verse.
6. Song of Myself
• “Song of Myself,” the longest poem in
Leaves of Grass, is a joyous celebration of
the human self in its most expanded,
spontaneous, self-sufficient, and all-
embracing state as it observes and interacts
with everything in creation and ranges
freely over time and space.
• Walt Whitman's Song of Myself is a
poem which attempts to liberate both the
poet and reader from the restraints of
convention by thoroughly exploring and
emphasizing transcendentalist beliefs of a
common soul or spiritual state, known only
in an individual's intuition, which
encompasses and goes beyond .
7. A Poem song of My self
by Walt whit man
• I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer
grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
• Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy
9. Works cited
• Jayroc. “Transcendentalism in Song Of Myself |.”
Http://Jayroc.Lookingforwhitman.Org/2009/09/24/Transcendentali
sm-in-Song-of-Myself/, 24 Sept. 2009,
jayroc.lookingforwhitman.org/2009/09/24/transcendentalism-in-
song-of-myself.
• “Themes Of Individualism And Carpe Diem Developed From
The... | Bartleby.” Https://Www.Bartleby.Com/Essay/Themes-Of-
Individualism-And-Carpe-Diem-Developed-F3PU7P3VG5YW,
www.bartleby.com/essay/Themes-Of-Individualism-And-Carpe-
Diem-Developed-F3PU7P3VG5YW. Accessed 19 June 2021.
