Question

How did the Transcendentalist views on the individual and society differ from those of the Dark Romantics?

Answer 1

Romanticism and transcendentalism are very closely related, because Romanticism influenced the ideas of transcendentalism. Overall, the major differences between romanticism and transcendentalism are their views of nature and the individual. Romanticism viewed nature as perfect and man as flawed, whereas transcendentalist ideas regard nature as symbolic, providing answers about virtue and wisdom. Romantics focused on the self more, but not to the extent of the transcendentalists, for whom the individual as the ultimate spiritual being and something you could derive all truth and knowledge from.

Here is what we learned in American Studies:

Romanticism
Romanticism from the literary perspective is a movement away from the enlightenment ideals of logic towards valuing emotion. Romantic authors wanted a story to be felt and for the reader to be inspired by a story. They considered their art an expression of the self, the self gaining prominence. In their writing, nature was considered perfect and man flawed, nature being a living mystery, and not a clockwork to be understood as it was in the enlightenment era. Their work and ideas also drew from the concepts of Idealism, in which the sublime and the terrifying are both ideal ways to express life as a beacon of raw emotion.

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism was a movement in which the individual was considered the spiritual center of the universe. They viewed God as a compilation of all the individual souls on Earth, which came together in the afterlife as an oversoul, which your spirit transcended to (What Emerson refers to as an oversoul, Whitman refers to as a float). Miracles were not considered in the biblical sense, because miracles were said to happen all around in every human being and in every part of nature. Wisdom and virtue were derived primarily from the individual's self-realization, but nature was also looked at to provide symbols of wisdom and virtue. This desire to explore oneself uniquely and individually created a tension with the desire to connect with nature and become one with the world. Self-realization and individual thought remain the major focus of transcendentalism though, and for this reason, history was strictly regarded as a resource for examples of self-realization, not as something to emulate. Another large belief of transcendentalism is the abhorance of consistency, which Emerson states is the "hobgoblin of little minds", and which Whitman refutes in "Song of Myself". One more miscellaneous belief of transcendentalism is that we are innately good, and that evil is the lack of self-realization and the happiness and good that results, not the presence of Satan as the Puritans formerly believed.



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