In “Literature as Equipment for Living” Kenneth Burke presents his perspective on the role and function of proverbs and literature. Both, he says, single out “a pattern of experience that is sufficiently representative of our social structure, that recurs sufficiently often... for people to need a word for it and to adopt an attitude towards it”. Be sure to analyze this point. After doing so, your task will be to discuss a text that has provided you with such equipment for living— that is, a book that sizes up a particular situation, adopts a specific attitude towards it, and gives advice for dealing with it. Be sure to summarize as necessary and to provide specific details on the situation, attitude, and lesson.

henry david thoreau and ralph warren emerson earned the name transcendentalists.you could assume that transcendentalists come from a well educated background from people that were alive before the american civil war.these people, mostly new englanders, mostly around boston, were attempting to create a uniquely american body of literature. it was already decades since the americans had won independence from england. and so they deliberately went about creating literature, essays, novels, philosophy, poetry, and other writing that were clearly different from anything from england, france, germany, or any other european nation.another way to look at the transcendentalists is to see them as a generation of people struggling to define spirituality and religion in a way that took into account the new understandings their age made available.