Emily Dickinson: Transcendentalist Experience Through Imagination The early 19th century ideas of transcendentalism, which were introduced by Ralph Emerson and David Thoreau, where man as an individual becomes spiritually consumed with nature and himself through experience are contrasted by Emily Dickinson, who chose to branch off this path by showing that a transcendentalist experience could be achieved through imagination alone. These three monumental writers set the boundaries for this new realm of thought. Although these writers ideas were not similar, they all followed the simple idea that “the universe is composed o