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

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5.  A prominent woman transcendentalist and editor of The Dial  After reading her powerful essays the New York Tribune asked her to become a correspondent.  1845 she published Woman in the Nineteenth Century.  A prominent woman transcendentalist and editor of The Dial  After reading her powerful essays the New York Tribune asked her to become a correspondent.  1845 she published Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

6. Transcendentalism’s Effect

7. 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

8. 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.