When did the transcendentalism literary period end?
I’d be a little hesitant to say it really ended, Unitarians still carry the torch, but if you had to name the high point authors that were a pretty tough act to follow, I’d say it ended after the works of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson were beginning to wane (about the 1880s, best guess)…the literary movement that followed was Literary Modernism, giants in that field were authors like James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. As for why it ended, I couldn’t tell you…capitalism was strong, people became more materialistic, the ideals of the Transcendentalists seemed quaint and niave…people are fickle, they move on to their own generation’s concerns in art as well as anything else. Hope this helps… Additional info: I got your email, just didn’t get a link to write you back, so I hope this add on helps…I would say the Transcendentalist Movement began when Ralph Waldo Emerson joined the Transcendentalist Club in 1836…though it existed a few years before that, I would have to say it was
