American Lit Return to Group

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Emerson Discussion Journal

Transcendentalism was a nineteenth-century movement in the Romantic tradition, which held that every individual can reach ultimate truths through nature, spiritual intuition, emotion, and imagination. Transcendentalism emphasized living a simple life and encouraged optimism, self-reliance, and individualism. The Americans who called themselves Transcendentalists were idealists, but in a broader, more practical sense. Like many Americans today, they believed in human perfectibility, and they worked to achieve this goal.

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