AbstractThe aim of this article is to examine Gibran Kahlil Gibran's ideas, as articulated in The Procession (Al-Mawākib), in the context of New England Transcendentalism, in particular Emerson's and Thoreau's. Even though critics recognize Ralph Waldo Emerson (and less frequently Henry David Thoreau) as an influence on Gibran, the precise nature of the influence has not been spelled out clearly. In this study, I shall attempt to do so. To the end of establishing the New England Transcendentalist influence on Gibran more firmly and coherently, I locate, explain, and highlight some of the striking echoes, similarities, and analogies (linguistic, philosophic, as well as structural) in Gibran's The Procession, on the one hand, and Emerson's essays and Thoreau's Walden, on the other hand. Such an examination of the relationship will certainly enrich the meanings of Gibran's poem, shed a new light on his ideas, and suggest an angle from which his philosophy is best viewed.
French philosophers and New-England transcendentalism