Eunice de Souza and Emerson: A Transcendental Reading

Transcendentalism, originating in nineteenth-century America, foregrounds the primacy of individual conscience, spiritual autonomy, and the pursuit of inner truth beyond institutional dogma. While traditionally associated with thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, transcendentalist ideals continue to resonate within modern literary expressions across cultures. This paper offers a comparative reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Eunice de Souza, examining how transcendental concerns—selfhood, moral independence, skepticism toward social conventions, and the search for authentic experience—manifest in their respective works. Although de Souza’s poetry is rooted in a late twentieth-century Indian urban milieu and marked by irony and restraint, it reveals a modern reworking of transcendentalist sensibilities. The study argues that de Souza does not replicate Emersonian idealism but revises it through skepticism and everyday realism, thereby extending transcendental discourse into a postcolonial, modern context.