American Renaissance & American Romanticism

“Transcendentalism” is a loose, baggy word that can have different meanings in different contexts.

intellectually, Transcendentalism is a form of mystic thought rooted in Western traditions like Neo-Platonism or Swedenborgianism. Its elevated, penetrating perspective resolves the many conflicting phenomena of the material world to a spiritual direction or meaning.

Formally, Transcendentalism combines

trans = across or through

scend = ascend, elevate

In other words, the viewpoint rises and broadens. This viewpoint creates strengths of resolution or comprehensiveness, but also weaknesses of abstraction, lack of literary story-telling.

Historically, Transcendentalism is a name for a loosely associated group of intellectuals, writers, and religious or social activists in New England in the 1830s-1850s who shared similar backgrounds, styles, and interests.

Most important figures: Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau

Next in importance: Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott), Theodore Parker, Charles Ripley, Henry James Senior, Jones Very.

Sometimes other American Renaissance writers or later figures are included because of stylistic or thematic resemblances in their literature, plus some of this group were personally acquainted with the Transcendentalists.*

What Transcendentalists had in common:

Emerson is at the center of the movement: most Transcendentalists were his friends or professional acquaintances.

Emerson was originally a Unitarian minister. Many Transcendentalists were pastors, members, or children of Unitarian Church members, in which Transcendentalism may be seen as a movement.

Unitarianism grew out of the Age of Reason. In contrast to the evangelical Christianity that grew in the same period, Unitarianism was never a mass movement, but its members tended to be highly educated and socially active. Thomas Jefferson and other "Founders" are often identified as Unitarians. Transcendentalism may be seen as an attempt to revive Unitarianism with greater emphasis on Romantic qualities like emotion, spirit, mystical experience, ect.

History of the Unitarian Church:

17^th century: Puritanism (Congregational Church) >

late 18^th century, early 19^th century: Congregationalism (Trinitarian) + Unitarian

1830s-1850s: Unitarianism > Transcendentalism

How do we get from Puritanism to Transcendentalism?

“Puritanism” is generally a bad word in modern discourse, and “hip” literary people usually shun Puritanism reflexively. But students of American literature and culture have to build a respectful relationship with the Puritans for the following reasons:

1. Puritans were highly literate people. If you’re a student of early American literature and culture, New England has far more records and texts to study than any other part of the USA. New England has continued to produce the most important writers to American literature. (Beyond the American Renaissance, think Robert Frost, e e cummings, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Pynchon.)

2. If most literary people are less than gung-ho about America’s possible image as an aggressively capitalist, imperialist nation, New England is among the only parts of the country founded for reasons other than economic opportunity a consistent home for movements involving Abolition of slavery, Women’s Rights, Pacifism, religious tolerance, and environmentalism.

How did the Puritans turn into “Yankee Liberals?”

Puritanism in New England. A “hot” church or religious movement “cools off.”

17^th century: Puritanism as part of Protestant Reformation. Boston as the “City on a Hill,” the “City of God” > Salem Witch Trials

18^th century: Enlightenment, Age of Reason. As education spreads, the western world opens to increasing knowledge of other religions besides Christianity and regret over excesses of religious behavior (e. g., Salem Witch Trials). “Unitarianism” appears as an attempt to recognize the “unity” of God throughout nature and the world and to “rationalize” religious behavior (e. g., to improve ethics and social justice rather than prepare for the hereafter).

Historical Note: Unitarianism is never a large, mass movement; its influence derives from social prestige and intellectual depth. At the same time that Unitarianism is emerging as a “cool” religion, “hot” religions such as Methodism, Southern Baptistry, Mormonism, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-Day Adventists are starting to bubble up all over the country. (“Hot” religions tend to emphasize individual salvation and the wellbeing of their religious community; “cool” religions tend to emphasize social justice on a larger scale.)

Peak period of Unitarianism: late 1700s, early 1800s.

Emergence of Transcendentalism: 1830s-50s.

Is Transcendentalism a religion? Obviously some religious themes, but never organized enough institutionally to become a religion of its own. You could call it a religious movement, but not a religion.

Why can public schools study Transcendentalism and not Baptistry or Mormonism?

*literary prestige

*”universality” of religious themes and images—its range of reference isn’t restricted to one religion

*no conversion motive: rather than draw a person to a particular way of thinking, Transcendentalism seeks for each individual to come to terms with whatever’s at work inside.

*Why religious conservatives can still gripe: Transcendentalism can sound like “New Age” thinking in its imagery of self-liberation and its diverse religious traditions—though New Age writing tends to be much lazier. Also, Unitarianism and Transcendentalism can be said to resemble “secular humanism” in terms of de-emphasizing a supreme divine authority beyond the human realm.

Genres: mostly non-fiction and poetry. Non-fiction may extend from Emerson’s essays to Thoreau’s intellectual memoirs to Fuller’s blend of essay and autobiography to sermons by Transcendentalist pastors.

Sometimes other American Renaissance writers are included because of stylistic or thematic resemblances in their literature, plus some of this group were personally acquainted with the Transcendentalists.*

*Whitman is the most frequent inclusion. His reading of Emerson was essential to his intellectual growth (“I was simmering, simmering, simmering . . . . Emerson brought me to a boil.”). When Whitman mailed Emerson a first edition of Leaves of Grass, Emerson wrote him back: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” Emerson’s essay “The Poet” appears to anticipate the changes Whitman makes in American poetry.

*Hawthorne and Melville are sometimes categorized as “Dark Transcendentalists” (compared to Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman as “Light Transcendentalists”). Hawthorne knew Emerson and lived in Concord (home of Emerson and Thoreau), and some of Hawthorne’s and Melville’s symbols and themes may resemble those of Transcendentalism. But he and Melville were more critical than supportive of Transcendentalism, and they primarily wrote fiction rather than the genres associated with Transcendentalism.

*Occasionally, listings will include American Renaissance writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson and Frederick Douglass among the Transcendentalists. Doubtless these authors read Emerson and other Transcendentalists, and some resemblances can be found between their patterns of thought and imagery and those of the Transcendentalists. But in such applications “Transcendentalism” becomes so broad that the term loses any historical specificity and begins to blur differences for the sake of emphasizing unity—which sounds like what the Transcendentalists were often about!

Some markers of Transcendentalist style and thought:

transcendence as spirit above material world: 

1517 stars, presence of the sublime

1518 a higher thought or a better emotion

mystical union

1555 [Unitarianism] Moses, Plato, Milton

1518 I am part and particle of God

In many respects, Transcendentalism simply overlaps Romanticism—but it’s Romanticism that develops out of Puritanism. Therefore it tends to be more spiritual and socially inclined. Formally, it places less emphasis on narrative and more on essays (or sermons) and poetry.