ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller were among the principals of the movement. The Transcendentalists believed there is a divine spirit in nature and in every living soul. Through individualism and self-reliance human beings could reunite with God.

Detailed explanation-2: -Transcendentalism is a philosophy that started in the late eighteenth century that stressed equality, intuition, nature, self-reliance, social responsibility, and the power of the individual.

Detailed explanation-3: -Transcendentalists advocated the idea of a personal knowledge of God, believing that no intermediary was needed for spiritual insight. They embraced idealism, focusing on nature and opposing materialism.

Detailed explanation-4: -Who was Ralph Waldo Emerson? He was an American transcendentalist who was against slavery and stressed self-reliance, optimism, self-improvement, self-confidence, and freedom.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Transcendentalists revered nature in a divine sense. Nature was not subordinate to them, but instead nature was the other part of a symbiotic relationship. This analogy is the creed of the transcendental view of nature and of man as individual.