Week 5: Transcendental and Symbolic Representation
Study Guide
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The Transcendentalists
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The Transcendentalists were a group of really fairly disparate thinkers in New England who were deeply committed to social, political, educational, and spiritual reform.  The center of their intellectual community was Concord, Massachusetts, where some of those who would become the most influential and renowned writers and thinkers lived.  Among them were Margaret Fuller, editor of the Dial; Ralph  Waldo Emerson, who would soon become their unofficial spokesperson; the Alcotts, including Bronson Alcott, social and educational reformer and his daughter Louisa May Alcott, the author; Henry David Thoreau, philosopher, naturalist and educator; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, novelist and short story writer.
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The term "transcendentalist" was not their own, but rather a term ascribed to them by the Rev. Dr. Andrews Norton, Unitarian theologian, who so characterized them as a term of derision.  Several of the "transcendentalists" opposed Unitarianism, although they had grown up in the Unitarian Church and more than one had studied in Unitarian seminaries for the ministry.  What turned them, however, was the discovery of the transcendental writings which they were receiving from England and Germany, including translations of the Hindu scriptures which introduced the whole world of Eastern mysticism to them.  Emerson's essays, "Self Reliance," "The Oversoul," and "Nature" espouse much of the Eastern concept of the holistic universe in which everything is sacred.  While New England Unitarianism was attempting to resurrect a strong, creedal-based Christianity based upon the notion of an inerrant Judeo-Christian Bible, the transcendentalists were truly "universalists," recognizing the ability of each individual to experience inward union with God in what was a natural relationship void of the necessity of any body of doctrine.  Certainly, their mysticism placed them at odds with the popular religious positions of the majority of New Englanders.

For more information on the Transcendentalists, read the introduction in your text.


This page was last modified on January 12, 2007,
and is maintained by Dr. Geoffrey Grimes.
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