ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -She agrees, and out on the water, Henry tries to explain Transcendentalism to her. He explains to Ellen that she loves her father, and always will, even if he is not beautiful or talented, and cannot fly like a bird or swim like a fish. She loves something about him that transcends what he actually is.

Detailed explanation-2: -He was a well-known advocate of transcendentalism, or the belief in the inherent goodness of people and nature, making a virtue of self-reliance. In his essay … On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Thoreau once wrote “That government is best which governs not at all”.

Detailed explanation-3: -He quit because he objected to the use of corporal punishment on children and refused to take part in it.

Detailed explanation-4: -Ralph Waldo Emerson Waldo gives many lectures at Harvard outlining the beliefs of Transcendentalism, and he finds a willing acolyte in one of his audience members, Henry David Thoreau. Waldo hires Henry as a handyman and tutor for his son, Edward, in exchange for the use of a piece of Waldo’s wooded estate.