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Read the introductions to the Concord writers. The writers of Concord,
Massachusetts, became the intellectual lights of the American Romantic
Movement. Emerson's essay, "Nature," was greeted as the clearest
distillation of the thinking of the Concord group, and in time, Ralph Waldo
Emerson became America's most popular public speaker as the "Sage of Concord."
Hawthorne moved into the "Old Manse," the home of the Emerson family for two previous generations. It was there he and his wife Sophia began their family and where, in his upper study, Hawthorne wrote some of his most important short stories. Louisa May Alcott, famous for her novel "Little Women," lived with her sisters and parents in Concord where her father opened an academy, teaching the liberal educational philosophies of the transcendentalists. Study Questions Over the Readings . Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” 1) Analyze a “hero” archetypal pattern in “Young Goodman Brown.” 2) In what sense is “Young Goodman Brown” an allegory? 3) What are two possible interpretations of Hawthorne’s theme in “Young Goodman Brown”? . Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self Reliance” 1) According to Emerson, wherein lies “greatness”? 2) Paraphrase Emerson’s explanation of the relationship between “the soul and the divine spirit.” 3) In what sense might this explanation represent the culmination of the American Romantic Movement? In what sense does it define “transcendentalism”? . Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” 1) With what in “Civil Disobedience” might Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi in India have identified? 2) What romantic themes or concepts are emphasized in Thoreau’s concept of society and our responsibility to society? 3) What is Thoreau’s concept of “evil”? 4) In what sense might Thoreau be identified as a “transcendentalist”? . Basic Concepts Related to the Readings . American Literary Romanticism The Theory of Correspondence and "Associative Writing" The Romantic Conception of Nature and Spirit The Intuition Unitarianism Transcendentalism Contrasting Neo-Classical and Romantic Motifs Romantic Individualism Contrasting Neo-Classical and Romantic Motifs . Click here to see the grave of Nathaniel Hawthorne at Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. . 
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