Transcendentalist HermeneuticsAmerican literary historians have viewed Ralph Waldo Emersons resignation from the Unitarian ministry in 1832 in favor of a literary career as emblematic of a main current in American literature. That current is directed toward the possession of a self that is independent and fundamentally opposed to the accoutrements of society and civilization and expresses a Transcendentalist antipathy toward all institutionalized forms of religious observance. In