The middle decades of the nineteenth century, sometimes known as the American Renaissance, yielded some of the most enduring literary works and influential philosophical ideas in American history. The Transcendentalist movement was central to defining this period, and nineteenth-century thinkers responded to it in different ways. While Emerson and Thoreau fostered it, Hawthorne and Poe criticized it; while Melville, though never part of New England Transcendentalism, was ambivalent. The movement was not entirely original, and American Transcendentalists borrowed much from the European and...

Transcendentalism, a movement of theological innovation and literary experimentation arising within New England Unitarianism in the 1830s and 1840s, significantly influenced American religion, literature, education, and political culture. This reference is the first comprehensive guide to the major philosophical concepts, themes, genres, periodicals, events, organizations and movements, and places associated with Transcendentalism in the United States. Significant classical, European, Asian, and native sources and influences are included, as are later transformations.

This reference...

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book," wrote Henry David Thoreau in Walden. Today that book continues to provoke, inspire, and change lives all over the world, and each rereading is fresh and challenging. Yet as Thoreau's countless admirers know, there is more to the man than Walden. An engineer, poet, teacher, naturalist, lecturer, and political activist, he truly had multiple lives to lead, and each one speaks forcefully to us today.Sponsored by the Thoreau Society, the brief, handsomely presented books in this series offer the thoughts of a great...