Transcendentalists

1. Transcendentalists Alone with Nature

2. What is Transcendentalism? • Tenets (Beliefs) • Truth is in nature • Everyone can get it • Social knowledge different than individual knowledge • Society can and will improve • Individual has effect on community • Non-conformity • Self-reliance • Authors: • Emerson • Thoreau • Fuller

3. Historical Context • 1830s-1860s • Mexican American War • Civil War • Centered at Harvard University • Inspired by German Philosopher Immanuel Kant • Originally Transcendentalism used as a put-down. They like it so it stays as their title

4. Henry David Thoreau • 1817-1862 • Upbringing: • Parents owned a little store • They worked as pencil makers • Education • Harvard • Labeled as failure

5. Henry David Thoreau • Activist and Intellectual • “We need to” • Wants change in individual • Tree hugger • Significant works: • Resistance to Civil Government • Walden • Slavery in Massachusetts

6. Ralph Waldo Emerson • Education • Mary Moody Emerson (aunt) in charge • Wanted to go to Harvard • Anti-Slavery • Self-Reliance • Man is disunited with self until one with nature • Nature is a symbol of your spirit • Anti-Institutionalism • Change in individual will result in change of society

7. Margaret Fuller • Education • Educated by father who was a lawyer at Cambridge • Would educate other women through “conversations” she published • Journalism • She writes for “The Dial” a Transcendentalist newspaper • Writes about women’s rights • “The Great Lawsuit: Men vs. Men and Women vs. Women” • “Women in the Nineteenth Century” • Death • Dies with her family in a shipwreck off of New York • Just returning from revolution in Italy