Romanticism vs. Transcendentalism Literary Movements

Transcendentalism. The word in itself reveals the meaning of this thought. Transcend, which means to rise. This philosophy means rising into enlightenment, to the oversoul. It is divided into 3 chief ideas, the goodness of man, glories of nature and free individual expression. There are many core thoughts, solitudes, nonconformity, genius, authenticity, living in the now, intuition, infancy, simplicity, interconnected, spirituality, nature, self-reliance, imagination and more. All of this core thoughts are fitted into the three main ideas.
Transcendentalism is centered around the individual, also referred to as the spiritual center of the universe. It talks heavily about the truth. The goal of transcendentalism is to embrace the world, while remaining unique. The world will try to conform you but it is a transcendentalists duty not to conform. Ralph Waldo Emerson is known as the father of Transcendentalism and Henry David Thoreau, helped mold Transcendentalism. Emerson, focused on self-reliance and nature whereas Thoreau focused on What I Lived For and Civil Disobedience. Emerson’s work focused on conflicts between man and society and had the core ideas surrounding originality versus conformity. Right versus wrong. Infancy versus old age. Change versus consistency. Nature. It puts emphasis on it sublimity, majesty, beautiful, untouched and unchanged. Thoreau’s work Where I Lived and What I Lived For talks about being awake and living deliberately. Thoreau’s civil disobedience was the most influential of the work, stating that the government who governs the least is the most successful, a just man in an unjust s...