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Movement

Transcendentalism

Also Known As New England Transcendentalism
Romantic and Transcendentalist Movements

A New England literary and philosophical movement of the 1830s and 1840s, organized loosely around the Transcendental Club (first meeting 1836) and the periodical The Dial (1840-1844, edited first by Margaret Fuller, then by Emerson). It gave American prose a essayistic, aphoristic voice distinct from the British model, and its insistence that a writer's authority comes from individual perception rather than convention shaped the free verse Whitman published in 1855.

Facts
Period, From (Year)
from 1836 1
Period, To (Year)
to 1860 1
No sharp close; the Transcendental Club and The Dial had dissolved by the mid-1840s. 1860 marks Emerson's last major collection in the movement's idiom, The Conduct of Life, not a formal end.
Connections

Associated Authors

Bronson Alcott, Authors
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Henry David Thoreau, Authors
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Margaret Fuller, Authors
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Authors
Source Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)

Associated With

An Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Works
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Dark Romanticism, Movements

Literary history relation between named movements

Essays: First Series, Works
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Essays: Second Series, Works
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Nature, Works

Widely read as the movement's founding manifesto, published the same year (1836) the movement's own period-start-year marks.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Representative Men, Works
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Self-Reliance, Works
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
The American Scholar, Works
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Conduct of Life, Works

1860, the same year the movement's own period-end-year marks (Emerson's last major collection in the movement's idiom).

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

Influenced By

Romanticism, Movements
In the Other Atlases

Same As

Transcendentalism

Also in Divinity Atlas: the same subject.

Transcendentalism

Also in Philosophy Atlas: the same subject.

Originated In

United States

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.

Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
  • Associated With: Nature
  • Associated With: Self-Reliance
  • Associated With: Essays: First Series
  • Associated With: Essays: Second Series
  • Associated With: Representative Men
  • Associated With: The Conduct of Life
  • Associated With: The American Scholar
  • Associated With: An Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge
View the Source
Transcendentalism (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Introductory paragraph
    Transcendentalism is a philosophical, spiritual, and literary movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the New England region of the United States.
  • Transcendental Club section
    Transcendentalism became a coherent movement and a sacred organization with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals, including George Putnam, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Henry Hedge.
View the Source
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