How do romanticism, transcedentalism, anti-transcedentalism relate to american culture?
Romanticism and transcendentalism ran headlong into the new and very empirical world of the later 19th Century. The movement whose major influence seems to have been Ralph Waldo Emerson and his associates was a reaction to the growing mechanical and machine world. The fear among this group was the world was being dehumanized by machines and manufacturing on a scale that most could not imagine. Society was changing very rapidly with new town and cities, urban blight and crime and growing issues with religion and changing mores. The movement was largely doomed to failure until WWI and the huge loss of life produced a reaction to such ultimate dehumanization.
