Back to the Basics An Introduction to Transcendentalism

1. Back to the Basics An Introduction to Transcendentalism

2. Things to ponder: • How are you affected by nature? Do you find comfort in it? • Do you reflect the moods of nature? • What is the role of nature in your life? • What is meant by an individual’s spiritual side? How do you define it? • Is there a connection between the individual’s spirit and nature? If so, what is that connection? • What does it mean to know something intuitively? For example, has a parent or a sibling ever known something was wrong with you without having talked with or seen you? • What do we mean when we say “I just know it”? • How do you demonstrate that you are an individual? Do you think independently of others or do you follow the crowd?

3. Transcendentalism • First truly distinctive American literature • Transcendentalists were a group of poets and philosophers – club formed in 1835 • Followers wanted to “go beyond” the limitations of the senses and discover higher truths and insights by using their intuition

4. Transcendentalists • Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) - Harvard graduate, had a brief stint as a Unitarian minister (like his father), wrote Self Reliance • Henry David Thoreau (1818 – 1862) – Graduated Harvard at age 20, a dedicated nonconformist: tried to live by his own values instead of society’s, wrote Walden

5. 1800-1850 • President Thomas Jefferson – 1801 • Louisiana Purchase - 1803 • Lewis & Clark headed west – 1804 • Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo – 1815 • Beethoven completed the Ninth Symphony – 1823 • Webster’s first dictionary – 1828 • Population of America grew from five million in 1800 to over 23 million in 1850 • California Gold Rush started 1848

6. The Transcendentalists

7. Life on Walden Pond

8. Thoreau’s Legacy

9. A Time of Change

10. The Civil Rights Movement

11. The Woodstock Generation

12. Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity