Transcendentalism
Beginning in the 1820s, a new intellectual movement known as transcendentalism began to grow in the Northeast. In this context, to transcend means to go beyond the ordinary sensory world to grasp personal insights and gain an appreciation of a deeper reality, and transcendentalists believed that all people could attain an understanding of the world that goes past rational, sensory experience. Transcendentalists were critical of mainstream American culture. They reacted against the age they lived in where people were encouraged to act the same as others and argued for greater individualism against conformity. European romanticism, a movement in literature and art that stressed emotion over cold, calculating reason, also influenced transcendentalists in the United States, especially the transcendentalists’ celebration of the uniqueness of individual feelings.
