Thoreau’s Cabin

Transcendentalism: An Era of Groundbreaking Thinkers By Brooke Blair Emerson FullerThoreau

1. Students should be able to identify at least two leaders and/ or great thinkers of the Transcendental Movement and describe their impact on at least two important individuals throughout history. 2. Students should be able to imagine that if they were Thoreau today what would they do to improve our society. Students will create a sign stating how they will better our world or a design/logo for a cause they would create or support. ( We will put them together as a sort of class quilt of inspiring ideas)

Transcendentalism, A Definition: A movement in nineteenth-century American literature and thought, that sought to explore the relationship between humans and nature through emotions rather than through reason. The movement’s goal was to transcend, or go beyond, human reason. The two most noted American transcendentalists were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Ralph Waldo Emerson  Leader of the American Transcendentalism movement  Attended Harvard School of Divinity  Published and edited The Dial  In 1836 published his famous essay Nature.

First learned of Emerson during his Harvard days Wrote Walden after living two years in the woods at Walden Pond. His strong abolitionist beliefs and protesting of the Mexican War inspired his essay Civil Disobedience.

 A prominent woman transcendentalist and editor of The Dial  Her essays were so powerful that she was asked to become a correspondent for the New York Tribune  1845 she published Woman in the Nineteenth Century.  A prominent woman transcendentalist and editor of The Dial  Her essays were so powerful that she was asked to become a correspondent for the New York Tribune  1845 she published Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

Transcendentalism’s Effect

Like Emerson, Emily Dickinson, was an individualist Whitman, like Emerson used nature as a theme for his poems. Emerson’s Impact on Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

Thoreau’s Influence on Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. cited Thoreau’s essay Civil Disobedience as a major influence on their peaceful resistance campaigns.

Henry David Thoreau Project Instructions: Select a piece of construction paper Decorate your sign with a design, logo, message, etc. of your choosing that represents something you would want to change or create in our world. Be creative and think like Thoreau