"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men."

The Old Manse in Concord, MA.

The Transcendentalists stood at the heart of The American Renaissance-- the flowering of our nation's thought in literature, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music in the period roughly designated from 1835-1880. Concentrated in Boston and Concord, MA, the home of many of the literary members such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, the Alcotts, Theodore Parker, Jones Very, George Ripley, the Peabody Sisters, and the Channings, Transcendentalism was far broader than a geographical phenomenon or a select club membership--though Ripley and Emerson had founded the Transcendental Club in 1836. Rather it was a faith shared by such diverse minds and such diverse places as those of Walt Whitman in Brooklyn or Emily Dickinson in Amherst or the Hudson River School of painters in New York; it was a visionary bent, a way of, as the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth had once described his mission, "of seeing into the life of things" that permeated the best of American thought and art throughout much of the 19th century. Even those artists of the American Renaissance who would find difficulty with the optimism of the Transcendentalists--Hawthorne and Melville among them--would be forced to focus on and respond to the existential issues the movement raised.

The term Transcendentalism was derived from the philosopher Kant, who called "all knowledge transcendental which is concerned not with objects but with our mode of knowing objects." The roots of the American philosophy ran deep into German and English Romanticism. From German philosophers such as Fichte and Herder, it received its mystic impulse; from Goethe, Novalis, Jean-Paul, Heine, and the other great German Romantic poets it acquired its imagistic language and themes. Acquaintance with German thought, by and large, filtered through English translations--Coleridge and Carlyle's among the best--and acquaintance with these and the work of other English Romantics such as Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Byron enriched the Americans' perspectives as well.

Walt Whitman in 1891.

In his 1841 address delivered at Boston's Masonic Temple , which was later reprinted in THE DIAL, Emerson attempted to define the philosophy in simple terms as "What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism; Idealism as it appears in 1842." In reality it was far more complex collection of beliefs: that the spark of divinity lies within man; that everything in the world is a microcosm of existence; that the individual soul is identical to the world soul, or Over-Soul, as Emerson called it. This belief in the Inner Light led to an emphasis on the authority of the Self--to Walt Whitman's I , to the Emersonian doctrine of Self-Reliance, to Thoreau's civil disobedience, and to the Utopian communities at Brook Farm and Fruitlands. By meditation, by communing with nature, through work and art, man could transcend his senses and attain an understanding of beauty and goodness and truth.

Transcendentalism dominated the thinking of the American Renaissance, and its resonances reverberated through American life well into the 20th century. In one way or another our most creative minds were drawn into its thrall, attracted not only to its practicable messages of confident self-identity, spiritual progress and social justice, but also by its aesthetics, which celebrated, in landscape and mindscape, the immense grandeur of the American soul.

THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
A SELECTED LIST OF WRITERS, ARTISTS, AND COMPOSERS

This list focuses not only on those creative artists working within the actual time frame of the American Renaissance, but also those whose art was a direct outgrowth of the Renaissance's and Transcendental thought.

Major Figures	Dates	Significance	Major Work
William Cullen Bryant	1794-1878	Poet	A FOREST HYMN
Bronson Alcott	1799-1888	Educator, Reformer	Temple School CONCORD DAYS TABLE TALK
George Ripley	1802-1880	Religious Reformer	founder Brook Farm ed. THE HARBINGER
Ralph Waldo Emerson	1803-1882	Philosopher, Poet,	ESSAYS WOODNOTES
Elizabeth Peabody	1804-1894	Feminist, Educator
Nathaniel Hawthorne	1804-1864	Author	SCARLET LETTER HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE
Henry W. Longfellow	1807-1882	Poet	POEMS ON SLAVERY EVANGELINE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH
John G. Whittier	1807-1892	Poet, Abolitionist	HOME BALLADS, POEMS, & LYRICS VOICES OF FREEDOM
Edgar Allan Poe	1809-1849	Poet, Author, Journalist	THE RAVEN ULALUME THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE THE BLACK CAT
Margaret Fuller	1810-1850	Feminist, Journalist, Literary Critic	WOMEN IN THE 19TH C. ed./essays THE DIAL
W.H. Channing	1810-1884	Christian Socialist	Brook Farm ed. THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE
Theodore Parker	1810-1860	Unitarian & Congregationalist Reformer	LETTERS TOUCHING THE MATTER OF SLAVERY
Harriet Beecher Stowe	1811-1896	Novelist, Reformer	UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
Walt Whitman	1813-1892	Poet	LEAVES OF GRASS
Jones Very	1813-1880	Poet, Mystic	POEMS & ESSAYS
Henry Ward Beecher	1813-1887	Congregationalist Minister, Reformer	SERMONS
Henry David Thoreau	1817-1862	Essayist, Naturalist, Philosopher, Poet	WALDEN CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MAINE WOODS JOURNALS
W. Ellery Channing	1818-1901	Biographer, Poet	THOREAU, THE POET-NATURALIST THE WANDERER THE WOODMAN
Julia Ward Howe	1819-1910	Poet, Reformer	SEX & EDUCATION THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
Herman Melville	1819-1891	Author	MOBY DICK BILLY BUDD BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
Hudson River School	1825-1850	Romantic Landscape Painters	KINDRED SPIRITS (Cole) IN THE WOODS (Durand) OLANA (Church)
Albert Bierstadt	1830-1920	Romantic Western Painter	THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
Emily Dickinson	1830-1886	Poet	COMPLETE POEMS & LETTERS
Louisa May Alcott	1832-1888	Author	LITTLE WOMEN TRANSCENDENTAL WILD OATS BEHIND A MASK
Mark Twain	1835-1910	Author, Journalist, Satirist	HUCKLEBERRY FINN TOM SAWYER INNOCENTS ABROAD
The Luminists	1840-1880	Romantic Landscape Painters	LAKE GEORGE (Heade) LAKE GEORGE (Kensett0
Daniel Chester French	1850-1931	Sculptor	Lincoln Memorial Minuteman Statue
Edward MacDowell	1860-1908	Composer	Songs + 1ST PIANO CONCERTO
Charles Ives	1874-1954	Composer	Songs + symphonies CONCORD SONATA
Charles T. Griffes	1884-1920	Composer	Songs + PLEASURE DOME of KUBLA KHAN