The transcendentalist mindset has been around since the Puritans, but it took men such as Emerson and Thoreau to popularize the concepts and beliefs of this idea. The core of transcendentalism is that it is " a philosophy that rejects the idea that knowledge can be fully derived from experience and observation; rather, truth resides in the spiritual world." In this essay, I hope to identify and explain the similarities and differences between the "optimistic" transcendentalists and the "darker" writers of the time period.
<Tab/>Emerson was the writer that most strongly influ…
