American Transcendentalism

Professor Samantha Harvey
Boise State University

Fifty years after “the shot heard ‘round the world” was fired in Concord, Massachusetts, another revolution was born in the same soil: American Transcendentalism. It was one of the first — and certainly one of the most exciting — intellectual, literary, and social movements in America.

Reading List

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

  • We will focus on the following chapters:

  • “Economy,” “Where I Lived and What I Lived For,” “Sounds,” “The Ponds,” “Higher Laws,” “The Pond in Winter,” “Spring,” “Conclusion”

  • Any edition, although I am fond of the Norton Critical Edition which has good notes and also includes “Civil Disobedience.”
    (ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393930904 or ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393930900)

“Civil Disobedience”

Louisa May Alcott Transcendental Wild Oats

  • (ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1557090963, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1557090966)

Margaret Fuller, Women in the Nineteenth Century

  • We will focus on the following chapters: “Women in the Nineteenth Century,” “The Wrongs of American Women. The Duty of American Women,” “George Sand,” “Ever-growing Lives,” “Educate Men and Women as Souls”

  • Any edition, or you could use the free online PDF at Project Gutenberg, or there are new and used older editions of the Norton Critical Edition on Amazon (ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393971570 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393971576)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”

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