Journal Entry 16: Intro to Romanticism

This is probably the most annoying journal entry ever.

The values of the Romantics were:
Favoring nature over cities- They loved to include nature in their books, music,poetry, and art. In Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote about living with nature expressing that it was better to live in an isolated cabin rather than near people. Walt Whitman wrote about nature in his poem

A change in the thought processes of the time, from reason and science to use of imagination and respect for nature, in the American and French revolutions spurred national pride with new found feelings of liberty, expression of oneself, and freedom.

The first transcedentalists believed that the spirit transcended the physical being but could only be realized through one's own intuition- not from organized religion. Some say they shared beliefs with early socialists.

Part of the Romantic movement (see Romanticism), it developed around Concord, Mass., attracting individualistic figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott. Transcendentalist writers and their contemporaries signaled the emergence of a new national culture based on native materials, and they were a major part of the American Renaissance in literature. They advocated reforms in church, state, and society, contributing to the rise of free religion and the abolition movement and to the formation of various utopian communities, such as Brook Farm. Some of the best writings by minor Transcendentalists appeared in The Dial.