What Was The Influence Of Transcendentalism

The nineteenth century was a period of awareness to American letters. The influence of European Romanticism yielded the way to a transcendent character. This period saw the emergence of a movement called Transcendentalism, which was born as a form of rejection of strict Puritan religious attitudes from New England, where the movement originated. The Transcendentalists were influenced by Romanticism, especially in areas such as self- examination, the exaltation of individualism, and the beauties of nature and humanity. Consequently, Transcendentalist writers expressed semi-religious feelings towards nature and the creative process. For example, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his writing The American Scholar invited other Americans who had a “love for
Transcendentalists attacked the Unitarianism and other churches by rejecting the existence of miracles (455). The Transcendentalist group was formed by authors such as Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau, among others. They had their own journal called The Dial. They supported educational innovation, abolitionism, feminist movements, and a reform of church and society. They believed in intuition as a way of knowing, as well as in individualism, and the belief in the divinity of man and nature. In the center of this cultural and intellectual activity the Transcendentalists, lead supported the idea of Samuel Coleridge that the mind was always creative and intuitive; contrary to the view of John Locke, whose interpretation of the mind was that of just an inactive receptor of impressions
He was born in Boston, educated in Harvard, and pastor of the Unitarian Church for a long period of his life. His idealistic language, his faith in the power of the soul, and the goodness of nature led him to believe that men could be the owner all the universe, only if they came to identify with it in its divine essence (454). The message of Emerson encouraged the people to break the tyranny of tradition and achieve the freedom that leads to self-realization. His essay, Nature, contains all the principles of his doctrine. He also noted the need to defend the individual independence, disregarding the imitation that dominate conformity; the need to forget what people might think; the need to rely on instinct; to overcome doubt and raise the faith and optimism. Each man must think for themselves and act on their own instincts. In the last lines of Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance, he wrote: “A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles”