The Transcendentalist movement
established freedom of expression and a break from puritan morality in American
culture. Exactly, the movement was against the existed society norms and
religious doctrines in one way or another.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the important questions to explain the above statement. What is transcendentalism and its historical background? Is it against the established puritan morality? Why do they stress self-reliance? What are some of the principles of this movement? Who were the chief proponents?
Transcendentalism was a religious, intellectual, and literary movement that emerged in New England in the 1830s and lasted until the 1850s. Transcendentalists were only tangentially related to one another. They weren't a well-coordinated, well-organized organization with a structured doctrine. They were unique and self-contained individuals who shared certain fundamental beliefs about man's position in the universe. They believe that people, both men, and women, have knowledge about themselves and their surroundings that "transcends" or extends beyond what they can see, hear, taste, touch, or feel.
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Transcendentalism was a revolutionary movement in many ways, posing a
threat to established religious doctrine. Some people were vehemently opposed to
Transcendentalism. Andrews Norton, a Harvard professor who denounced Emerson's
"Divinity School Address" in 1838 and later wrote Discourse on the
Latest Form of Infidelity in 1839, was one of its most reactionary critics.
Transcendentalists believed that divine wisdom could be gained directly from
God, without the need for an intermediary. They were proponents of idealism,
emphasizing the importance of nature over materialism.
The transcendentalists as a collective led
the celebration of the American experiment as an experiment in individualism and self-reliance. They
advocated for women's rights, abolition, reform, and education, among other
radical causes. They slammed the government, organized religion, legislation,
social institutions, and the creeping industrialization of the United States.
They developed an American "state of mind" in which imagination was
better than rationality, ingenuity was better than theory, and action was
better than contemplation. And they believed that everything would be fine
because humans could push beyond boundaries and achieve incredible heights.
The chief proponents of this movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic
Henry Hedge, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt
Whitman, and Theodore Parker. Emerson was the father of this movement and he
urged Americans to avoid looking to Europe for inspiration and imitation and to
be themselves in his most popular essay, "THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR." He
claimed that people were born with good qualities and that everyone's ability
was untapped. He encouraged his coworkers to seek answers to life's most
perplexing questions by looking inside themselves, through nature, into art,
and through their work. Members of the
Transcendental Club were inspired by utopian movements such as the Shakers to
join a commune to bring their theories to the test. A small number of them,
including author Nathaniel Hawthorne, moved to Brook Farm in West Roxbury,
Massachusetts, in 1841.
With the arrival of the 1850s,
Transcendentalism was thought to have lost some of its power, particularly
following the death of Margaret Fuller death. Following the collapse of Brook
Farm, its members remained active in the public eye—notably Emerson, Thoreau,
and others in their public opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850—but it
never reformed as a cohesive party.
This movement revolves around five points.
(1)
God is reflected in everything.
(2) The physical world serves as a gateway to
the spiritual realm.
(3) People can see God in nature and their
own souls by using intuition.
(4) A person's best authority is themselves.
(5) Intuition and feeling are superior to logic and reasoning.
There were others who criticized the
Transcendentalists. They were dubbed "Frogpondians" by Edgar Allen
Poe, who ridiculed their work on several occasions. Even Nathaniel Hawthorne,
who was only tangentially involved with the movement, became dissatisfied with
their utopian ideals. He wrote The Blithedale Romance, a satirical novel based
on his time at Brook Farm, a Transcendentalist utopian. While
Transcendentalists were widely mocked on the political front for their
abolitionist views and generally pacifist position on national affairs. They
were mostly charged with a lack of clear ideas.
Walt Whitman as a transcendentalist
Whitman's entire writing was based on this transcendentalism theology. Leaves of Grass, Whitman's greatest literary achievement, had thrown the concepts of divinity, the holy trinity's order, and the ethereal beauty afforded these elements into disarray. In his poems "I Saw in Louisiana..." "A Noiseless Patient Spider," and "When I Saw the Learn'd Astronomer," Walt Whitman depicts Transcendental subjects such as nature and the common man.
