ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Transcendentalism is a 19th-century school of American theological and philosophical thought that combined respect for nature and self-sufficiency with elements of Unitarianism and German Romanticism.

Detailed explanation-2: -American transcendentalism is essentially a kind of practice by which the world of facts and the categories of common sense are temporarily exchanged for the world of ideas and the categories of imagination.

Detailed explanation-3: -Transcendentalists believe that society and its institutions-particularly organized religion and political parties-corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly self-reliant and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community can form.

Detailed explanation-4: -As a group, the transcendentalists led the celebration of the American experiment as one of individualism and self-reliance. They took progressive stands on women’s rights, abolition, reform, and education. They criticized government, organized religion, laws, social institutions, and creeping industrialization.