Transcendentalists: Original Hippies and Environmentalists

By Eva Arce

TRANSCENDENTALISM

ASSERTION: With their love for nature and humanity, Transcendentalists of the Nineteenth Century in America established the ideas that Hippies and Environmentalists embraced in the Twentieth Century.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Nature (1836)  The American Scholar (1837)  Self-Reliance (1841)

Henry David Thoreau

 Walden  Civil Disobedience

Margaret Fuller



Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1843)

Frederick Douglass



A Narrative on the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

(1845) 

My Bondage and My Freedom

(1855) 

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

(1881)

Characteristics

 Glory of Nature  Emphasis on the goodness of humanity  Individualism  Self-reliance  Tolerance

Characteristics-continued

 Focus on the human spirit  Belief in the Brotherhood of Man  Truth through Intuition  Optimism/Idealism  Belief in the Over-Soul

Transparent Eyeball (Go to readings)

Pocahontas

Disney Motion Picture

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The Empire Strikes Back

Transcendentalism à la Yoda

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Avatar

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THEMATIC CONCLUSION: By respecting nature and maintaining an open mind towards other people and their cultures, the Transcendentalists gave modern man sound advice about how to treat each other and our planet.