Ralph Waldo Emerson belonged to the period of American Romanticism. He wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, later he revised them for print. His prolific writing varied with number of subjects never adopting any fixed philosophical theory. He was keen developing ideas such as individuality, freedom, human potential to realise anything, and relationship between private self and universal soul. His ‘Nature’ was published in 1836, which set his future tone of transcendentalism. “With Emerson’s Nature Transcendentalism found its first adequate expression not only in philosophy but in literature, and it is accordingly from 1836 that Higginson and others have dated the beginning of a genuine and distinctive American literature” (16, …show more content…
Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Emily Dickinson were instrumental in evolving the New England transcendentalism as a culmination of American Romanticism following after Emerson’s idealism. His romanticism not only enhanced the content and theme of American writing but also elevated the attitude towards literature. Emerson advocated literary independence for the writers of America. His approach to literature was on two levels: the first on the emphasis of nationalism instead of colonialism, and the second was the stress on individual rather than group. He encouraged making typical American content with distinct American style. He believed that the greatness lay in every heart, which needed only to be set free. In the American Scholar he says, “Meek young men grow up in libraries; believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, Which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books” (57, ESL). Therefore every American writer must trust his/her own self instinct and produce the work of art based on the principles and styles innate to them. He wanted to bring about the altering effect on the private man and then on society as a