Roots of Utopia
This political shift after the Jackson administration encouraged Americans to question institutions and value individual judgment.
What is the spread/expansion of democracy?
He was the leading voice of Transcendentalism and emphasized self-realization and reconnecting with nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This practice involved building ideal, egalitarian societies free from capitalist competition.
Communalism
These two authors strongly opposed Transcendentalist individualism and presented darker views of human nature.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville
Create a deep spiritual connection between the individual and nature, reform society by changing the individuals first. Used writings as well.
Transcendentalism
His work Walden describes his search for meaning beyond traditional society.
Henry David Thoreau
These communities organized work equally and were based on Fourier’s principles.
Phalanxes
This group believed societies should be shaped only by spiritual or moral principles, opposing Transcendentalism.
Religious Idealists
This 19th-century economic shift produced nostalgia and pushed some Americans toward utopian experiments.
What is the Market Revolution?
This poet aimed to transcend “invisible boundaries” between isolation and community while celebrating democracy.
Walt Whitman
This community combined farming with intellectual labor and was rooted in Transcendentalist ideas.
Brook Farm
Transcendentalism encouraged authors to break from the “courtly muse” of this continent.
Europe
This European cultural movement emphasized emotion and individuality, directly influencing American Transcendentalists.
What is Romanticism?
She argued that “every arbitrary barrier” should be removed so women could have equal opportunities.
Margaret Fuller
These rural groups believed self-sufficient farming communities could create perfect environments.
Who are rural communalists
Enlightenment philosopher who opposed the philosophy of individualism.
Jean Jacques-Rousseau
This general philosophy encouraged Americans to value self-reliance, personal freedom, and intuition.
What is Individualism?
Social reformer who created the doctrine he called “perfectionalism” which was the idea that humans could achieve a sinless life on earth. Through his ideas, a utopian community, Oneida, was built.
John Humphrey
This utopian society linked women’s greater social power with new sexual norms and shared labor.
Oneida
Poet who rejected Transcendentalism off the basis of the evil nature of humans and the optimistic foundations of utopia.
Edgar Allan Poe