Emerson's Influence On Transcendentalism

Acknowledged as one of the most influential essays of the 19th century, the innovative ideals and encouraging philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” revolutionized the literary movements of the period and ushered in the birth of Transcendentalism. Throughout the duration of his life, Emerson intellectually developed his reasoning and ideology in order to eventually share his philosophies with the world to the extent of modernizing institutional standards and traditions. But between Emerson’s youth and adulthood, several momentous occasions profoundly altered his ethics and philosophies. The sudden death of Emerson’s first wife, Ellen Tucker, prompted him to leave the country and travel to Europe, where he was introduced to

As introduced earlier under the description of the future advocates of Transcendentalism, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller composed the members of the Transcendental Club, Emerson included, and although “Nature” laid the groundwork for Transcendentalism to flourish within society, the Transcendental Club is what truly stimulated Emerson to lecture creatively and write ingenious essays. Conferencing with a group of intellectuals who all maintained similar beliefs, Emerson was able to share theories and receive feedback, resulting in his eventual decision “to begin a magazine, “The Dial,” with Margaret Fuller editing, in 1840… His “Essays” (first series) were published in 1841” (Woodlief). Written only a year after the onset of his magazine and contained within his first publication of “Essays,” the arguments of “Self-Reliance” were undoubtedly affected by the Transcendental Club. As a result, Transcendentalism became the focal point of Emerson’s writing and ideology, examples of which pervades his text: “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind” (3). In another instance, a few years preceding the publication of “Self-Reliance, Emerson orated a lecture titled, “The American Scholar,” to Cambridge University: “We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men” (12). Thus, the Transcendental Club, and