The Transcendentalists Essay

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Transcendentalist can be defined by their context – by what they were fighting against, rebelling against. They see the current situation at the time and tried to be different from it. Many believed in a literary independence. They began to write essays, novels, philosophy, poetry, and other writings based on different form of literature, different from anything from England, France, Germany, or any other European nation. Another way of looking at Transcendentalists is that they tend to be struggling to define spirituality and religion. They participated in social reform movements for anti-slavery and women’s rights (www.transcendentalists.com). They are finding themselves, creating a new identity for themselves as a group, and being unique compared to the rest of society. The Transcendentalists wrote, not for themselves, but for the world. They wrote for anyone interested in the notion of transcendence, or the notion of using reason and intellect to exceed one’s limits of the world. (www.vcu.edu) A poet is unique to a transcendentalist because he can see nature and portray it in his own verse. (www.vcu.edu) “A poet’s wreath and robe is to do what he likes to do” (Charles Bakely, p137). A poet can do what ever he feels like when he is writing poetry. He is capable of writing verses that his of his own. It is believed that art lies within the process of creating these poetic verses, within the experience itself. (www.vcu.edu) They believe that as long as people use their intellect, ideas would always be evolving and never-ending. (www.vcu.edu) Ralph Waldo Emerson was a poet that wrote poems mainly for his own self. His contribution to aesthetics lies within his ideas on nature and the ability to transcend the rest of the world to focus solely on nature. (www.vcu.edu) Nature is beauty. Beauty is nature. Within the boundaries of nature, a transcendentalist can
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