Transcendentalism: Dismembering Proactive Religion and Conformity Developed in America during the 19th Century, transcendentalism, widely referred to as a “belief in a higher reality than that found in sense experience or in a higher kind of knowledge than that achieved by human reason” (“Transcendentalism."). William Cullen Bryant, the first American poet of international reputation, used several elements of transcendentalism in his poetry. By allowing his poems to be original and not imitating similar ideas from different poets of his time, Bryant’s poetry remains spoken and recited by many Americans of present time. Bryant’s strong imagery of nature and its compatibility with American literature is the focus in all of his poems resembling