Abstract

The 19th century is an age during which America developed very fast. Seeing the rebellions of the Unitarians and Universalists against traditional Trinitarianism and against Calvinist predestinationarianism in early 19th century, the new generation decided to lead the revolutions to go further. Thus transcendentalism, which is regarded as the first renaissance in the American literary history, appeared. Their core belief is the innate goodness and inner divinity of both man and nature. They insisted that man should be independent and self-reliant. Attempting to create a uniquely American body of literature, transcendentalists deliberately tried to create literature, essays, novels, philosophy, poetry, and other writing in a way clearly different from England, France, Germany, or any other European nation.

Walt Whitman was influenced by their statements, especially on the individual and religious part. He took common people as the hero of his poems and created a new literature form—free verse. In his works, nature is another major subject. Whitman loved nature very much and believed that nature is ennobling.

In this background, this thesis employs transcendentalism and the elements of poetry as its theoretical foundation and adopts content analysis as the research methods to study the transcendentalism ideas in Walt Whitman’s poems. It explores the formation of transcendentalism by studying its sources and observes the common point of transcendentalism and Walt Whitman’s belief by analyzing the content, themes and literary forms of the longest poem in Leaves of Grass—“Song of Myself”.

Key Words: transcendentalism, Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
 
摘        要

十九世纪是美国快速发展的时期。在看到十九世纪早期反对传统三位一体宗教观和加尔文主义命定论的革命后，年轻一代认为革命应该进行的更彻底。就这样，超验主义出现了。它被视为是美国文学史上的第一次文艺复兴。他们的核心观点是人与自然都具有善良的天性和内在的神性。他们认为人应该独立自主和自力更生。为了创造一个独立的美国文学，他们在创造文学，散文，小说，诗歌，哲学等时有意使用与英国，法国，德国，或其他欧洲国家不同的文学形式。
沃特•惠特曼深受他们的影响，尤其是在个性和宗教方面。他将平民作为他诗歌的主要对象并且创造了自由体诗歌。自然是他的作品中另一个重要主题。惠特曼热爱自然并认为自然是神圣的。
在上述一背景下，本文采用了超验主义和诗歌元素作为理论基础，内容分析法作为研究方法来研究超验主义思想在怀特曼的诗。它探讨了超验主义的来源并分析了《草叶集》中最长的诗--《自我之歌》的内容，主题和文学形式。以此来分析超验主义思想与惠特曼观念的共同点。

关键词：超验主义，沃特•惠特曼，自我之歌