Course work topic

The Dial is significant for many reasons: Transcendentalists wanted their own literary magazine and it shows how much Fuller contributed to Transcendentalism and the development of American Literature. In 1846, she declares, “Without such ideas all attempts to construct a national literature must end in abortions like the monster of Frankenstein, things with forms and the instincts of forms, but soulless and therefore revolting. We cannot have expression till there is something to be expressed” (717). She was absolutely right: Why waste time writing something that copies others when new thoughts should be pursued. As Greenblatt lays out, “[I]f an exploration of a particular culture will lead to heightened understanding of a work, . . . a careful reading of a work of literature will lead to a heightened understanding of the culture within which it was produced” (438). The Transcendental movement changed literary history forever and with that transformation changed culture. Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller changed the literary landscape and American culture with Transcendentalism, and it all began with Emerson’s “Nature.”
Walt Whitman read “The Poet” and was influenced by Emerson’s words. Whitman’s 1855 Leaves of Grass has many characteristics of Transcendental thought. Yet “Song of Myself” is the most popular Transcendental poem “because of its vision of the self and its relationship to the universe” (Woodlief). Individuality and personal revelation are two characteristics the Transcendentalists focused on. After reading Emerson’s works, Whitman became like an heir to Emerson. After Thoreau visited Whitman in New York during December of 1856, he returned home and wrote to his friend Harrison Blake (Woodlief). Praising Whitman, he stated, “That Walt Whitman, of whom I wrote to you, is the most interesting fact to me at present, . . . [b]ut even on this side he has spoke more truth than any American or modern that I know. I have found his poem exhilarating, [and] encouraging” (Woodlief). It is not clear from these words which poem he is referring to, but this admiration from Thoreau says a lot about Whitman’s contribution to Transcendentalism and that he was truly following the ideals Emerson set down in “Nature,” becoming one of the first true American poets and a follower of Transcendentalism.
As Emerson wrote in “Self-Reliance” in 1841, “[T]he highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton, is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men wrote but what they thought” (538). Before Emerson introduced Transcendentalism to American readers, Washington Irving had created the Sketch and James Fennimore Cooper had established the prototypical American hero, Natty Bumppo, as well as the first adventure novel; he also was the first writer “to explore and define American themes, settings, and characters” (McQuade, “James Fenimore Cooper,” 408). Not long after, Edgar Allan Poe pushed literature in a new direction by establishing the basic conventions of the Detective Story. One might say that Poe was indirectly affected by Transcendentalism since his views on life didn’t match others of his time. Everyone now, whether they want to believe it or not, has been indirectly influenced or effected by one of the greatest literary movements known to man. Emerson and his fellow Transcendentalists had an unprecedented influence on American culture as they shaped the literary landscape of today.