Essays on Transcendentalism

Transcendental literature has four fundamental premises: a view of nature as being symbolic, the belief that self-realization yields individual happiness, all knowledge begins with self-knowledge, and the belief that an individual is the spiritual center of the universe. Two well-known and celebrated poets whose work was inspired by transcendentalism are Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson....

Transcendentalism can be defined by the belief that your intuitive thoughts are more important than knowledge, and is pursued by ‘living deliberately’. Transcendentalism developed five main morals over time. Firstly, non-conformity, the belief that we must follow our hearts and become unalike from everyone else in society. Individualism, the belief that the highest authority is...

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Transcendentalism was a 19th-century literary, philosophical, and reform movement that emphasized the development of the individual as its primary subject of concern” (Wayne 285). In other words, it is a concept that integrates nature, humanity, and divinity onto the same spectrum. Everything is equal if it is given the same...