1、内江师范学院本科毕业论文1Abstract: American famous writer, Louisa May Alcotts novel Little Women fully reflects the transcendental ideas. This novel based on the American Civil War contains complex cultural contexts and thus, can be read from many perspectives. This thesis attempts to read this novel from the p
2、erspective of Transcendentalism, and try to tap the Transcendentalism embodied in thought, in order to broaden peoples perspective of reading the novel. Transcendentalism promotes the unity of people, God, the spirit of natural, to emphasize the spirit of self and self-reliance. These ideas are refl
3、ected in the March sisters growing up and character. March sisters have different personalities and talents, but they focus on their own spirit improvement and strongly maintain the self-reliance and self-independent spirit. Transcendentalism gave the charisma to the March sisters and made the novel
4、 won the readers favorite. In addition, Alcott extended Transcendentalism to women reality in Little Women, and it increases the readability of the novel.Keywords: Little Women; Transcendentalism; Individualism; Self-reliance摘要：美国著名女作家露易莎梅奥尔科特的长篇小说充分体现了超验主义思想.这部以美国南北战争为背景的小说包含着复杂的文化情境，可以从多重视角来解读。 本文
5、试图从超验主义视角解读这篇小说，并尽力挖掘该小说中体现的超验主义思想，以拓宽人们阅读该小说的视野。超验主义宣扬人、神、自然的精神统一，强调精神、自我和自助。 这些思想都在 马奇姐妹的性格和成长过程中有所体现。马奇姐妹具有不同的性格和才华，但都注重自己的精神提高和完善，并极力保持自助和自我独立的精神。超验主义赋予了马奇姐妹人格魅力，使小说赢得了读者的喜爱。此外奥尔科特在小说中把超验主义延伸到女性现实，这也增加了小说的可读性。关键词：小妇人；超验主义；个人主义；自助 内江师范学院本科毕业论文2毕业设计（论文）原创性声明和使用授权说明原创性声明本人郑重承诺：所呈交的毕业设计（论文），是我个人在指导教
6、师的指导下进行的研究工作及取得的成果。尽我所知，除文中特别加以标注和致谢的地方外，不包含其他人或组织已经发表或公布过的研究成果，也不包含我为获得 及其它教育机构的学位或学历而使用过的材料。对本研究提供过帮助和做出过贡献的个人或集体，均已在文中作了明确的说明并表示了谢意。作 者 签 名： 日 期： 指导教师签名： 日 期： 使用授权说明本人完全了解 大学关于收集、保存、使用毕业设计（论文）的规定，即：按照学校要求提交毕业设计（论文）的印刷本和电子版本；学校有权保存毕业设计（论文）的印刷本和电子版，并提供目录检索与阅览服务；学校可以采用影印、缩印、数字化或其它复制手段保存论文；在不以赢利为目的前提
7、下，学校可以公布论文的部分或全部内容。作者签名： 日 期： 内江师范学院本科毕业论文3学位论文原创性声明本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日学位论文版权使用授权书本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意学校保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权 大学可以将本学位论文的全
8、部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。涉密论文按学校规定处理。作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日内江师范学院本科毕业论文4Thesis Statement: This paper discusses the importance of the Transcendentalism in Little Women and its influence on the minds of the four March daughters.Outline:.The Development of Transcendentalism
9、A. The Connotation of TranscendentalismB. Some Important Comments on Transcendentalism.Transcendentalism in Little WomenA. A Brief Look at the Plot of the Little WomenB. The Reflection of Transcendentalism through the Characters in Little Women1. Tomboyish Jo2. Beautiful Meg3. Fragile Beth 4. Romant
10、ic Amy5. John Brooke6. Laurence boy.The Influence of Transcendentalism in Little Women on the Future Literature.Conclusion内江师范学院本科毕业论文5A Transcendental Reading of Little WomenIntroductionLouisa May Alcott, the second daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail “Abba” May was born in Germantown, Penn
11、sy1vania on November 29, 1832. Her famous work, Little Women is a novel written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two parts in 1868 and 1869. The novel follows the lives of four sistersMeg, Jo, Beth, and Amy Marchand is loosely based on
12、the authors childhood experiences with her three sisters. The first part of the book was an immediate commercial and critical success, prompting the composition of the books second part titled Good Wives, also a huge success. Both parts were first published as a single volume in 1880. Alcott followe
13、d Little Women with two sequels reprising the March sisters, Little Men (1871) and Jos Boys (1886). Little Women has been adapted to play, musical, opera, film, and animated feature.Some scholars have studied about images in Little Women. They lay particular emphasis on self-dependence and self-disc
14、ipline in Little Women (许绮，2004：122). From the studies, we can find out that different personalities reflect different outlooks on value and life. The studies only describe what the female images in Little Women, while this thesis is to attempts to read this novel from the perspective of Transcenden
15、talism, and try to tap the Transcendentalism embodied in thought, in order to broaden peoples perspective of reading the novel.Little Women totally reflects the spirits of transcendentalism. The March sisters in this novel were the classic reflections of self-reliance, individualism and feminism.The
16、 Development of Transcendentalism A. The Connotation of TranscendentalismTranscendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century. It is sometimes called American transcendentalism to distinguish it fr
17、om other uses of the word transcendental. Transcendentalism began as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard and the 内江师范学院本科毕业论文6doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among transcendentalist
18、s core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state that transcends the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individuals intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions. Prominent transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Orestes Brownson,
19、 William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, John Sullivan Dwight, Convers Francis, Margaret Fuller, William Henry Furness, Frederick Henry Hedge, Sylvester Judd, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Peabody, George Ripley, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Jones Very. Others included Amos
20、 Bronson Alcott and A.E. Waite.The publication of Ralph Waldo Emersons 1836 essay Nature is usually taken to be the watershed moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. Emerson wrote in his speech “The American Scholar“: “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our o
21、wn hands; Divine Soul which also inspires all men.“ Emerson closed the essay by calling for a revolution in human consciousness to emerge from the new idealist philosophyIn the same year, transcendentalism became a coherent movement with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachu
22、setts, on September 8, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals including George Putnam, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederick Henry Hedge. From 1840, the group published frequently in their journal The Dial, along with other venues. The movement was originally termed “Transcendentalists“ as a pejo
23、rative term, suggesting their position was beyond sanity and reason.The practical aims of the transcendentalists were varied; some among the group linked it with utopian social change and, in the case of Brownson, it joined explicitly with early socialism, while others found it an exclusively indivi
24、dual and idealist project. Emerson believed the latter. In his 1842 lecture “The Transcendentalist“, Emerson suggested that the goal of a purely transcendental outlook on life was impossible to attain in practice.内江师范学院本科毕业论文7By the late 1840s, Emerson believed the movement was dying out, especially
25、 after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850. “All that can be said“, Emerson wrote, “is that she represents an interesting hour idealism as it appears in 1842.“2 That description mentions two of the very elements, an emphasis upon heightened spiritual awareness and an interest in various types of ph
26、ilosophical idealism, that make transcendentalism so difficult to describe. In actuality, we cannot speak of a well organized and clearly delineated transcendentalist movement as such. Instead, we find a loosely knit group of authors, preachers, and lecturers bound together by a mutual loathing of U
27、nitarian orthodoxy, a mutual desire to see American cultural and spiritual life freed from bondage to the past, and a mutual faith in the unbounded potential of American democratic life. Located in the Concord, Massachusetts, area in the years between 1835 and 1860, the transcendentalists formed not
28、 a tight group but, rather, a loose federation. Though a movement such as transcendentalism cannot be said to have had one distinct leader, Emerson was clearly its central figure. The publication of his Nature in 1836 is generally considered to mark the beginning of an identifiable movement. The nex
29、t two decades were to see numerous new works from Emerson and poems, essays, and books from other transcendentalist figures, such as Henry David Thoreau, Orestes Bronson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, and 内江师范学院本科毕业论文9Theodore Parker. Never forming an official affiliation, the
30、se figures and others associated with them banded together for the formation of an informal discussion group called the Transcendental Club; the publication of the transcendentalist literary and philosophical journal, The Dial and the establishment of an experiment in utopian communal living, Brook
31、Farm. One thing almost all those associated with the movement did share, however, was a common heritage of Unitarianism. Perhaps more than anything else, this fact helps to explain the development of transcendentalism and its later and larger significance for American culture. The transcendentalists
32、 broke with Unitarianism for two reasons. First, they objected to the Unitarian desire to cling to certain particulars of Christian history and dogma. Emerson called this clinging a “noxious“ exaggeration of “the personal, the positive, the ritual,“ and he asked instead for a direct access to God, u
33、nmediated by any elements of Scripture and tradition. And second, the transcendentalists lamented the sterility of belief and practice they found in the Unitarian faith. According to Thoreau, it is not mans sin but his boredom and weariness that are “as old as Adam.“ The American Adam needs to excha
34、nge his bondage to tradition for a freedom to experiment: “old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.“ In some ways transcendentalism attempted to recapture for the American spirit the fervor of the original Puritan enterprise. That zeal, with its attendant bliss and agony, had been suppressed
35、 or exiled to the wilderness of the American religious experience by the end of the eighteenth century. Transcendentalism was one of the first and most dramatic protests against civil religion in America. Though it did not live up to the expectations of its adherents, many of them expected nothing l
36、ess than a total regeneration of social and spiritual life through the application of the principles of idealism in America, transcendentalism has had a lasting impact. In the years immediately preceding the American Civil War, several of the transcendentalists were important participants in the abo
37、litionist movement, and in the decades to follow, widely divergent individuals and movements would find inspiration in the transcendental protest against society. 内江师范学院本科毕业论文10For example, Henry Ford, who once said that history is bunk and declared Emersons essays to be his favorite reading, dwelt
38、upon the transcendentalists disdain for convention and their exaltation of self reliant power, while both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King drew deeply upon the resources of Thoreaus famous essay, Civil Disobedience.Perhaps even more significantly, transcendentalism marked the first substantial
39、attempt in American history to retain the spiritual experience and potential of the Christian faith without any of the substance of its belief. By claiming an essential innocence for man, by substituting a direct intuition of God or truth for any form of revelation, and by foreseeing a future of ill
40、 defined but certain glory for humankind, transcendentalism paved the way for the many romantic notions about human nature and destiny that have become such a central part of the American experience in the last hundred years.Transcendentalism in Little WomenA. A Brief Look at the Plot of the Little
41、WomenAlcott begins Little Women by invoking John Bunyans 17th century text The Pilgrims Progress. Alcotts except sets the stage for the tone and theme of the events to come in her novel. In fact, the first chapter of Little Women is entitled Playing Pilgrim. It is no coincidence that Alcott would ch
42、oose The Pilgrims Progress as the work which would influence the minds of the four March daughters. Little Women is partly autobiographical, since Alcott herself grew up in a family of four girls. Moreover, Alcotts father was friends with both Emerson and Thoreau, which undoubtedly impacted young Lo
43、uisa May. Her exposure to such works as The Pilgrims Progress was a result of her upbringing, close to the heart of New England transcendentalism and to the values it espoused.In their old-fashioned New England home the little women lived with Mrs. March, their brisk and cheery mother, who always ha
44、d a “can-I-help-you“ look about her, and whom her four girls lovingly called “Maumee.“ Father March was an army chaplain in the Civil War, and in his absence Jo declared her-self to be the man of the family. To add to their slender income, she went every day to read to Aunt March, a peppery old lady; and Meg, too, earned a small
