Transcendentalism and Utopianism
by Gwendelyn Butler and Christian Maines
Introduction
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1. Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1832)
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ralph Waldo Emerson was a leading figure in the development of Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism evolved from the Unitarian theology that dominated at Harvard Divinity School and advocated self-realization, self-sufficiency, and the rejection of tradition. The growth of Transcendentalism exacerbated regional differences because it contradicted the political and industrial trends emerging in other parts of the country and thus came to define New England more so than the country as a whole. Some Transcendentalists (such as Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman) tried to stop the general shift towards a new market society by starting communal experiments and reviving intellectual life. Still others shifted their focus to reforming American society as a whole. Emerson's work at Harvard Divinity School therefore demonstrates that Transcendentalism spurred regional differences by proposing an alternative to industrial American society.