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 Transcendental Legacy
LiteratureThe Transcendental Movement dramatically shaped the direction of American literature, although perhaps not in the ways its adherents had imagined. Many writers were and still are inspired and taught by Emerson and Thoreau in particular, and struck out in new directions because of the literary and philosophical lessons they had learned. Walt Whitman was not the only writer to claim that he was "simmering, simmering, simmering" until reading Emerson brought him "to a boil." Emily Dickinson's poetic direction was quite different, but she too was a thoughtful reader of Emerson and Fuller. In his own way, even Frederick Douglass incorporated many lessons of transcendental thought from Emerson. Other writers would deliberately take their direction away from transcendentalism, toward realism and "anti-transcendentalism" or what Michael Hoffman calls "negative Romanticism"; Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville found extraordinarily creative ways to object to many aspects of their transcendental contemporaries, even as they incorporated others. Few American writers since have been completely free of the influence of Emerson and Thoreau, whether in reaction or imitation.
Books can and have been written on this subject, and this is only an introduction. Perhaps the most visible manifestation of transcendental ideas and form today is in the developing genre of nature writing. With its roots firmly in a world-view adapted from Emerson's Nature and the literary inspiration of Thoreau's Walden in particular, this interdisciplinary yet literary genre has evolved under the pens of numerous writers, from John Muir and John Burroughs to writers as diverse as Annie Dillard, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Loren Eiseley, Ed Abbey, Gary Snyder, Barbara Kingsolver--and the list expands every year. ASLE [Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment] Ann Woodlief, VCU
"Transcendental" poems of Emily Dickinson
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