Who are the Anti-Transcendentalists?

Answer 1

Anti-Transcendentalism was a literary movement that essentially consisted of three writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. Hawthorne and Melville were the most prolific in the genre, though all these men are easily some of the greatest fiction writers of their time. In opposition to the Transcendentalists, their work focused on the limitations and destructiveness of the human spirit. Whereas Transcendentalists believed that truth and happiness could be found though human feelings, intuition, and spirit, Anti-Transcendentalists believed that, at their cores, humans were generally evil, bitter, and sinful beings. Some examples of Anti-Transcendentalist works include: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Marble Faun, The Raven, Moby-Dick, and The Fall of the House of Usher.