Can you describe the Transcendentalist Movement?

The Transcendentalist Movement, like all other movements, was a reaction to the unsettling feelings authors felt based upon the previous movements. The immediate movement previous to the Transcendental movement was Romanticism, which was a reaction to The Age of Reason. Given that the Romantic movement overlapped, and some of the Transcendentalists still upheld Romantic ideals, one could assume that the Transcendentalist movement was more of a secondary reaction to The Age of Reason over dislike with the Romantic period.

The Transcendentalist movement was popular between 1836 and 1846. This movement was influenced by Immanuel Kant. Kant believed that an individual needed to think autonomously and not rely upon dictates made by outside forces (people/ideas of "authority"). Therefore, his influence upon Transcendentalism came from the fact that the Transcendentalists believed that a man/woman was best when they were able to self-reliant and independent of oppression/forced ideologies.Basically, these writers believed in the inherent good nature of mankind.

Themes which were popular in the movement were ones which spoke to self-actualization, the impact of nature and the meaning which aligned with natural images, and social reform.

Transcendentalists tended to use free form in poetry given their desire to pull away from the constraints which formed poetry placed upon them. The tone of the Transcendentalists was one of the exalted. The writers were intense and their writings proved to be deeply meaningful.

Popular authors of the period were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau.

What was the "Transcendentalism" movement?

The Transcendentalists emerged from a small group of New England intellectuals in the first half of the nineteenth century. Influenced by European Romantics, they argued that there were certain truths that transcended logic, and that could best be understood through intuition rather than rational thought. They rejected, in short, the Enlightenment focus on reason, observation, and calculation. They were especially critical of the form of Unitarianism espoused by William Ellery Channing, which Emerson derided as "corpse-cold."

Transcendentalists also celebrated the individual, pointing out that God had created man in his own image, and endowed him with an intellect and spirit that was divine.For transcendentalists, especially Emerson, people, and indeed everything on Earth, was inseperable from God. For Emerson, in particular, this led to a radical celebration of the individual. Other transcendentalists, notably Henry David Thoreau, took this individualism into the sphere of social action, criticizing many of the social ills of his day, especially slavery and what Thoreau perceived as the acquisitiveness and shallowness of modern society.

Transcendentalism can thus be understood as not only a reaction to the rigidly rational traditions of the Enlightenment and the conventions of European philosophy and art, but also as a protest against early nineteenth century society, rapidly changing in the face of the Market Revolution, Manifest Destiny, the Second Great Awakening, and the expansion of slavery.