A hostile American reviewer of Wordsworth noted that ‘he tries to look on nature as if she had never been looked on before’ and he bemoaned that fact that the poet seemed to be attracting an ‘ever increasing school of devoted disciples’ in America. Now, what he blames Wordsworth for accurately sums up the ambition of many of the Transcendentalists. There is no need here to disentangle the indigenous emotional drive from the imported European ideas in Transcendentalist thought. But it is important to stress how eager the Transcendentalists were to develop a new attitude towards...
Source: Literary Movements for Students, ©2013 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
(The entire page is 2704 words.)
Want to read the whole thing?
Subscribe now to read the rest of this article. Plus, get access to:
- 30,000+ literature study guides
- Critical essays on more than 30,000 works of literature from Salem on Literature (exclusive to eNotes)
- An unparalleled literary criticism section. 40,000 full-length or excerpted essays.
- Content from leading academic publishers, all easily citable with our "Cite this page" button.
- 100% satisfaction guarantee READ MORE
