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本篇论文共分为五部分。第一部分介绍了研究背景。第二部分具体阐述了超验主义的发展过程。第三部分探究了梭罗超验派隐居的缘由。根据以上部分的内容，本文第四部分阐述了《瓦尔登湖》中梭罗的超验主义的实践，同时这一部分也是全文的重要部分。最后，第五部分总结全文。本文旨在帮助读者更深入的欣赏《瓦尔登湖》一书。
关键词：超验主义，瓦尔登湖，亨利.戴文德.梭罗，隐居
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments.......i
Abstract..ii
摘要....iii
1 Introduction.....1
2 Three Stages of Transcendentalism5
2.1 Origin and Development of Transcendentalism.5
2.2 Emerson’s Transcendental Discipline.6
2.3 Influence of Transcendentalism..6
3 Thoreau’s Transcendental Solitude8
3.1 The Relationship between Emerson and Thoreau..8
3.2 Generation of Thoreau’s Transcendental Solitude..8
4 Transcendental Practice in Walden. 10
4.1 Transcendental Walden.10
4.2 Simplicity for Spiritual Happiness11
4.3 The Oneness of Man and Nature..12
4.4 Contemplation in Solitude ...13
5 Conclusion..17
Bibliography......18,3060
1 Introduction
Transcendentalism is in many aspects the first notable American intellectual movement. As one of the most important literary schools in the history of American literature, it certainly is the first to inspire succeeding generations of American intellectuals, as well as a number of literary monuments.
The transcendentalists are considered as a generation of well educated people who lived in the decades before the American Civil War and the national division. Those people, mostly New Englanders around Boston, were attempting to create a unique American body of literature in their time when there were decades since the Americans had won independence from England. And those people believed it was the time for literary independence. They deliberately went about creating literature, essays, novels, philosophy, poetry, and other writings that were clearly different from anything from England, France, Germany, or any other European nation. The transcendentalists desired to ground their religion and philosophy in transcendental principles: principles not based on or falsified by, physical experience, but deriving from the inner spiritual or mental essence of the human. And the major figures of them are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Margaret Fuller and Amos Bronson Alcott. Other prominent transcendentalists include Louisa May Alcott, Orestes Brownson, William Ellery Channing, William Henry Channing, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederic Henry Hedge, Sylvester Judd, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, George Ripley, Thomas Treadwell Stone, Emily Dickinson and Jones Very.
Thoreau's personality was bolder and more action-oriented than Emerson's. Henry David Thoreau as an author gained literary reputation in many ways. At his time, he did not get much attention. However, after his death, he was considered as “one of the few writers of the nineteenth century who deserve the appellation ‘great’” (Buell, 2011:75). He had written two books, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Walden, and a large amount of journals and essays. The failure of his two books didn’t change his mind. For half a century after his death, Thoreau remained in obscurity, but his reputation rose steadily. His voice became a major voice for 19th-century America. Walden as Thoreau’s masterpiece is a great transcendentalism work that came out of the period under discussing. As a young man, Thoreau took an unusual interest in nature, thus he spent two years and two mouths in living at the Walden Pond and wrote down his life experiences. Thoreau believed that man should seek truth directly by himself but not through the imitation of others. As he saw it, the best way to find truth is by coming back to the nature, because modern civilized life has dehumanized man and placed man in a spiritual adversity. J.L Basile summed up as Walden talks about human being, what he is, and what he should be and must be. The purpose of Walden is to argue for, explain, and demonstrate Thoreau's philosophy of life which is practical and poetic, personal and universal. Thoreau developed his own sense of economics, an understanding that differs greatly from that of Karl Marx or that of Adam Smith. The sense of economics can free an individual from a life of toil and worry. But in addition, he developed a purpose for life, a purpose more important than economics. Rather than seeing the acquisition of wealth as the goal for human existence, Thoreau saw the goal of life to be an exploration of the mind and of the magnificent world around us. According to a report by American Heritage in 1985, Thoreau’s masterpiece Walden stood the first of ten books which shaped the American character. The famous literary critic, Robert F. Sayre comments: “Walden, is one of the America’s books, is at once a personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, manual of self-reliance, and masterpiece of style.”(Channing, 2005:102)