Transcendentalism an idealist philosophical tendency among writers in and around Boston in the mid 19th century. Growing out of Christian Unitarianism in the 1830s under the influence of German and British romanticism. Transcendentalism affirmed Kant principle of intuitive knowledge not derived from the senses, while rejecting organized religion for an extremely individualistic celebration of the divinity in each human being. The transcendentalists' manner of interpreting nature in symbolic terms had a profound influence on American …showed first 75 words of 2086 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2086 total…books back to America when they returned home. During this period, too, translations into English from European works began to make foreign thought and writing more available. At the same time, many in England and America were exposed to German thought and literature through the writings of Coleridge and Carlyle. Among the many foreign authors who influenced the Transcendentalists were the Germans Kant, Hegel, Goethe, and the English writers Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth and Plato.