Transcendentalism is a literary movement that has essay-writing at its heart. That's because some of the most important texts of the movement were essays. Go figger! Through the essay form, writers...

A lot of the Transcendentalist writers wrote poetry as well as essays. If essays allowed them to present their Transcendentalist ideas in a clear, coherent form, poetry allowed them to express the...

The Transcendentalists believed that folks can understand truth through intuition. That is, we don't arrive at truth by donning a lab coat, putting on goggles, and conducting an experiment in a lab...

Everything, according to the Transcendentalists, is connected. The universe contains all of us, and each of us contains the universe in our soul. Isn't that like The Force? Or just some hippy New A...

Individualism is a really important idea, and a way of life, for the Transcendentalists. They believed that a big reason people feel unhappy or dissatisfied is that they try too hard to conform. An...

Those Transcendentalists sure loved taking long walks, hugging trees, and sniffing flowers. Like, they really loved nature. They felt that industrialization—which was sweeping through the country...

The Transcendentalists weren't just out for religion: they were social and political rebels. They believed that society, as it stood, needed some serious retooling. Treatment of women? Appalling. S...

In many ways, the Transcendental Club was at the heart of the Transcendentalist movement in New England. The Club formed in 1836, when Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with his buddies George Ripley, Geo...

The Dial was the journal that members of the Transcendental Club founded in 1840. They wanted a platform to bring their ideas to the general public, but since they were having a hard time gett...