Transcendental And Anti Transcendental Movements Essay -- essays resea

Transcendental and Anti-Transcendental Movements     During the New England Renaissance menses of 1840-1855, literature underwent two very distinct movements known as transcendentalism and Anti-Transcendentalism. Both movements were very influential and consisted of authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (Transcendentalist) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (Anti-Transcendentalist). Concentrating their ideas on gay nature and intuition, rather than on logic and reason, both these movements served as a flourishing revolt against previously accepted ideas.     The Transcendental movement think its ideas on the essential unity of creation, the pure goodness of humanity and in individual intuition as the highest source of knowledge, rather than sensory experience. Optimism prevail peoples thoughts and was shown in the ideas of the Transcendentalists. The Transcendentalists believed deeply in human potential and in the laurels of Nature. Truth, they belie ved, was to a fault reflected in Nature and how it made you feel, and Nature was a reprimand of the beauty of human nature. They focused on the possibilities of the human spirit and the force of it reaching the "Over Soul". The "Over Soul" is the so-called posit in which all beings (Nature, God, and Humanity) are spiritually united. During this movement, individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of traditional authority were also highly st...