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Transcendentalism

Also Known As New England Transcendentalism

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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.
Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated Authors

Associated With

Nature, Works

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

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

In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Associated With: NatureView the Source
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Associated With: Self-RelianceView the Source
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Associated With: Essays: First SeriesView the Source
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Associated With: Essays: Second SeriesView the Source
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Associated With: Representative MenView the Source
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Associated With: The Conduct of LifeView the Source
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Associated With: The American ScholarView the Source
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Associated With: An Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, CambridgeView the Source
Transcendentalism (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationIntroductory paragraph
Quote, 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.
View the Source
Transcendentalism (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationTranscendental Club section
Quote, 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.
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