Important+People

Important People:  **Who are transcendentalists?** Transcendentalists are people who were attempting to create a uniquely American body of literature. They were struggling to define spirituality and religion which led to the account of new understandings, made during their age.

|| - An American lecturer, philospher, essayist, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement. He was a champion of individualism and he spread his thoughts by publishing dozens of essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the U.S. ||
 * **Ralph Waldo Emerson**
 * **Henry David Thoreau** [[image:http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/PamMack/lec124/thoreau.jpg width="201" height="217"]] || - An American author, poetm abolitionist, naturalistm tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book //Walden;// a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, //Civil Disobedience,// an agrument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

- Firmly believed in the power of self-reliance and individual thought - Held that people should act according to their own beliefs, even if they had to break the law ||  || - Some poems of Emily Dickinson seem to be transcendental, yet not quite. She appears to search for the universal truths and investigate the circumstances of the human condition: sense of life, immortality, God, faith, place of man in the universe. ||
 * **Emily Dickinson**
 * **Margaret Fuller**

 || - Her full name was Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli. She was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. ||
 * **Theodore Parker**

|| - An American Transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Utarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words and quotes which her popularized would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. || || - An English social theorist and Whig (British Political Party) writer, and she is often known as the first female sociologist. "'When one studies a society, one must focus on all its aspects, including key political, religious, and social institutions'". She also believed an analysis of a society should be required to have an understanding of women's lives. Martineau changed sociological opinions on issues previously ignored, such as marriage, children, domestic and religious life, and race relations. || || - A Unitarian minister and educator, and a widely influential theologian and philosopher. He wrestled with questions concerning the Bible, sources of authority, the meaning of Christ, the validity of non-Christian religions and the roles of reason and conscience. He helped to shape both Unitarian and general religious thought. || || - An American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism. ||
 * **Harriet Martineau**
 * **James Martineau**
 * **Thomas Wentworth Higginson**