Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism was an intellectual movement that directly or indirectly affected most writers of the New England Renaissance. Transcendentalism movement consisted of two authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. They believed that the human sense could only know physical reality. Transcendentalists focused their attention on the human spirit and were interested in the natural world’s relationship with humanity. They felt that they come to now themselves and universal truths better if they explore nature thoroughly. Their overall belief was that all forms of beings were spiritually united through a shared universal soul (239). Transcendentalist authors believed that nature would make people feel better. Emerson supported this belief by saying “Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece (Emerson 240). In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature, he supports the belief that the natural world has a relationship with humanity.