unit essay

Amy Leach
March 9, 2003
Period 1
Unit Essay

There are many writers of this period who were strongly influenced by the intellectual movement called transcendentalism. Transcendentalists valued individual over society, and also non-conformism. It was developed in Boston in the first half of the nineteenth century. Transcendentalism was influenced by Unitarianism and Romanticism. They encouraged the process of creativity and stressed the importance of individualism. Three of these writers were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. These men were very influential on our country in many different ways.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, also known as “The Father of Transcendentalism” or “The Thinker”, was born in 1803 and lived until 1882. Emerson was one of the many people who was influenced by the transcendentalism beliefs. He urged simplicity of life and freedom from society, which were two major ideas of the transcendentalists. Two of ...