Question

Which American author was most directly inspired by the ideals of Transcendentalism?

Answer 1

1. Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau was an American poet, philosopher, abolitionist, and a leading transcendentalist.

2. Connection with nature.

Transcendentalism´s main idea is human harmony with nature, stating that nature can improve spiritually and provide a connection with the rest of the world.

3. Utopian Communities.

The mid-19th-century transcendentalist ideas about spiritual and social structure was a major influence in later Utopian movements.

4. "Two Rivers".

5. New England.

Transcendentalism became a consistent movement with the establishment of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836, by leading New England intellectuals.

Answer 2

1- The American author who was most directly inspired by the ideals of Transcendentalism was Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years he followed Transcendentalism, a loose and eclectic idealist philosophy that argued that an ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond the physical and the empirical, and that intuition is achieved through personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. In its opinion, nature is the outward sign of the inner spirit, expressing the "radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts."

2- Transcendentalism central value was the human connection with nature.

For the transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical to the soul of the world and contains what the world contains.Transcendentalists worked with the feeling that the advent of a new era was within reach. They were critical of their contemporary society for their unreflective conformity, and urged each individual to seek "an original relationship with the universe."

3- During the mid-19th century, Transcendentalist writers had a strong influence over the formation of  utopian communities.

4- The Transcendentalist writing that most directly influenced African American activists in the 1950s and 1960s was "Two Rivers".

5- Transcendentalism was centered on writers and thinkers from New England.

The vast majority of transcendentalist writers and thinkers came from the State of Massachusetts, and had been educated at Harvard University.