Ralph Waldo Emerson’s, Walt Whitman’s and Henry David Thoreau were among the authors whose works made a significant contribution to the American culture. In their works, the humanistic tendency of the 19th century was expressed. This movement was based on the belief in the unity of the world and God. The doctrine of “self-confidence” and individualism was developed by convincing the reader that the human soul was connected with God and identified with him.
Walt Whitman believed that there is a vital, symbiotic relationship between the poet and society. Stepping away from the historical tradition of portraying exalted heroes, Whitman turned to the personalities of ordinary people. Whitman’s work erased the boundaries of poetic form and classical prose and the poet is often called the father of free verse, although he did not invent it. Whitman openly wrote about death and sexuality, the topics largely seen as taboo, and in his verses portrayed the impact that recent urbanization in the United States had on the masses.
The American writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau was an advocate of “practical isolationism”, who argued for a conscious break with society as the only way to preserve and develop personality. For Thoreau, nature was the realm of freedom, in which a person finds harmony. At the same time, the thinker did not fall into extremes and completely abandoned civilization, for him loneliness was only a way of finding support within himself.
For Ralph Waldo Emerson, nature was one of those general ideas that played the role of an ideal in the philosophical moral system. The writer spoke about the amazing expediency of nature, all parts of which were harmony and constant organic interaction. The writer evaluated human actions from the point of view of their compliance with the laws of nature. This feature of Emerson’s worldview anticipated to some extent the principles of social Darwinism. But unlike the representatives of this trend, he spoke about the need for moral assessment and constructed a moral ideal.