Essays on Transcendentalist

The influx of new cultures during the onslaught of the Industrial Revolution in the middle phase of the 18th century brought radical changes that challenged the rigid social hierarchy, philosophy, and the views of one’s self against the world. According to Macionis et al., one of the most notable impacts created by the Industrial Revolution was the invention of the steam engine. In 1765, the British inventor James Watt pioneered the technology through the use of coal power which resulted to more production compared to the manual labor. Factories spurred and gave way to large scale human employment ...

Transcendentalism was a philosophical belief, which thought that nature held the key to the greater truths of mankind. Jon Krakauer in his book “Into the Wild” may not have been a transcendentalist himself, but it is apparent that the subject he writes about in the book, Chris McCandless, shared the same ideas as the transcendentalists which lead him on the journey that it did, across the United States, into Mexico, and into Alaska, where eating poison potato seeds led to his death. But though he died, during the last years of his life while he was freely moving across the ...

In the early 1800s, Neoclassical writing was par for the course; works were typically very restrained, conservative, and focused on structure more than anything else. However, as the 19th century rolled along, more and more authors (including Washington Irving and

James Fenimore Cooper) found themselves writing stories of passion, full of experimentation and discovery. In these works, notions of established language and literary structure were challenged, as the Romantics ceased believing in the established systems of literature and created wholly new works that were free from restraint. While the works of Smith demonstrate the observational, dry and formal writing ...

Transcendentalism has been regarded as an American philosophy and idea that states that both women and men have knowledge about their existence and are conscious of the world around them, in a manner that transcends their senses. According to Brodrick (2010), the knowledge of self and the environment is realized through either imagination or intuition and not through the senses or logic. Reuben (2011) regards transcendentalism as a spirituality and state of mind that prompts the person to go outside his/her senses, shun corruption, and materialism, and gets united with nature. This ideology started in the 19th century. Some of ...

"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the ...

American Transcendentalist Literature

The Transcendentalist movement consisted of a group of people that were skeptical of the status quo in religion, science and politics. They studied philosophy and wrote great literature. In fact they even influenced the writing of the Declaration of Independence. Ralph Waldo Emerson is the American who is most often thought of when transcendentalism is mentioned. During the height of the popularity of the movement he was at the center. On December 9, 1841 Emerson gave a speech titled “Transcendentalism” at Boston’s Masonic Temple. In it he strongly stood up for less rigid attitudes towards nature for example he ...

Transcendentalism is a philosophy that espoused the strength and value of the individual, grounding thoughts and religion around the idea of individual power and idealism (Koster, 1975). According to transcendentalism, reality is centered around the idea of the self; man relies on itself in order to continue existing and thriving, and there is a kind of spirituality that comes from being able to sustain oneself and succeed on their own. Henry David Thoreau, in his works Walden and “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” showcases his transcendentalist ideas in a number of ways. In his novel Walden, Thoreau details the two ...