Summary:
Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson are two of America's greatest writers and the two greatest Romantic writers of all time. Their similar optimistic viewpoints are reflected in this highly analytical essay.
Following the highly organized and reasoned thought of the Revolutionary Period, American writers began to develop original and abstract ideas that contradicted previous conceptions of Age of Reason writers. Thinkers of the time disassembled the Great Chain of Being, a central principle in the Revolutionary Period, and considered all aspects of the world equal, ranging from plants, to humans, to God. Romanticism, the innovative philosophy, focused around three major doctrines: the individual, nature, and one's inner self. People developed different interpretations of these aspects, thus bringing about two distinctly opposite groups of Romantics. Pessimistic thinkers, also known as dark side Romantics, postulated that humans were innately evil, nature was mysterious and unknown, and people's minds centered around sinful, devious thoughts and actions. Contrarily, optimistic, sanguine philosophers had a brighter view of the main doctrines. They thought.....
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