Transcendentalism, Network Concepts and American Poetry

Abstract

Introduction. The paper aims at describing the philosophy of transcendentalism as viewed by 19th century American philosopher Ralph Emerson, one of its founders and, above all, the direct application of this framework to the contemporary view of network concepts introduced as a state-of the art paradigm of cultural and social development, often viewed as directly applicable to the study of social processes as well as literary texts.Methodology and sources. The chosen methodology includes the structural semantic study of Emerson’s texts and the analysis of the view of contemporary philosophers of the language and literary critics on the network concept as a basis for state of the art social schemes and internet-communication principles, as well as literary texts analysis.Results and discussion. The results of the research allow to hypothesize that the philosophy of transcendentalism which attempted to give a full-fledged representation of a harmonious and dynamic cosmic principle, seeing ways of moral purification and comprehension of the super-soul has similar principles with the works by outstanding poststructuralist or postmodern philosophers (like G. Deleuze) and is directly applicable to the study of contemporary literary texts if not social processes. These concepts allow to see the development of aesthetic paradigm (a vivid example being the development of the transcendental motive in poetry). One of the possible examples could be seen in the development of poetic paradigm with а) early romantic poetry concentrating on the poet’s emotions, thus rendering the transcendental, with b) modernist writing which used language as a medium, when a poem became a means of expressing the transcendental, with c) poetry combining political views and the transcendental experience, with d) post-colonial poetry, with the transcendental being transferred from the sphere of “eternal” to the sphere of “everyday”. Conclusion. American transcendentalism allows to see common patterns of development and innovation of cultural, literary, philosophical scene, characteristic of the contemporary aesthetic paradigm.