The Critical Reception of Emerson

The Critical Reception of Emerson PDF Author: Sarah Ann Wider
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 9781571131669
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A history of the most important scholarly criticism of Emerson from his time down to the present. Since the 1820s, Ralph Waldo Emerson has provoked an unsettled response from his readers and contentiousness among critics. Critics still contest Emerson's position: Was he poet or philosopher? Did he liberate American literatureor narrow it to a one-dimensional idea? Is his signature concept of self-reliance the most profound contribution to democratic individualism or the epitome of capitalism's impoverished thought? But by the mid 20th century the swing between condemnation and celebration of Emerson had given way to the familiar story of his bisected career, which provided a neat structure for viewing his life and work, and shaped our thought about him. Now that story is beingchallenged by the application of poststructuralism and textual editing, and with the publication of an amazing repertoire of editions, the Emerson canon is changing. The result is that Emerson criticism now faces a far more complex group of writings than before. One hundred and fifty years after Emerson styled himself an 'experimenter' who would 'unsettle all things, ' this new critical history illustrates the continuing, thought-provoking success of thatexperiment. Sarah Ann Wider is Professor of English at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

The Critical Reception of Emerson

The Critical Reception of Emerson PDF Author: Sarah Ann Wider
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 9781571131669
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
A history of the most important scholarly criticism of Emerson from his time down to the present. Since the 1820s, Ralph Waldo Emerson has provoked an unsettled response from his readers and contentiousness among critics. Critics still contest Emerson's position: Was he poet or philosopher? Did he liberate American literatureor narrow it to a one-dimensional idea? Is his signature concept of self-reliance the most profound contribution to democratic individualism or the epitome of capitalism's impoverished thought? But by the mid 20th century the swing between condemnation and celebration of Emerson had given way to the familiar story of his bisected career, which provided a neat structure for viewing his life and work, and shaped our thought about him. Now that story is beingchallenged by the application of poststructuralism and textual editing, and with the publication of an amazing repertoire of editions, the Emerson canon is changing. The result is that Emerson criticism now faces a far more complex group of writings than before. One hundred and fifty years after Emerson styled himself an 'experimenter' who would 'unsettle all things, ' this new critical history illustrates the continuing, thought-provoking success of thatexperiment. Sarah Ann Wider is Professor of English at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

Essays and Poems

Essays and Poems PDF Author: Jones Very
Publisher: University of Michigan Library
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson

Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson PDF Author: Tiffany K. Wayne
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816073580
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the greatest of the Transcendentalists, is often considered to be the central thinker in American history. In essays such as "Self-Reliance" and poems such as "Concord Hymn," he gave voice to ideals that Americans have held dear ever since. Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson is a reliable and up-to-date resource for students interested in this prolific author. This illustrated volume examines Emerson's life and 140 of his most important works, including all of his major essays and 60 of his poems. Coverage includes: A concise but thorough biography Entries on major books; lectures; essays, such as "Self-Reliance," "Nature," and "The Over-Soul"; poems, such as "Concord Hymn," "Brahma," and "Merlin"; and more Entries on related people, places, and topics, including Henry David Thoreau, Concord, the Transcendental Club, Unitarianism, the Dial, and more Appendixes, including a chronology of Emerson's life, a bibliography of his works, and primary and secondary sources.

The American Scholar

The American Scholar PDF Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Learning and scholarship
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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A Fable for Critics

A Fable for Critics PDF Author: James Russell Lowell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Emerson

Emerson PDF Author: Robert D. Richardson Jr.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520918371
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 705

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Book Description
Recipient of the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives us a rewarding intellectual biography that is also a portrait of the whole man. These pages present a young suitor, a grief-stricken widower, an affectionate father, and a man with an abiding genius for friendship. The great spokesman for individualism and self-reliance turns out to have been a good neighbor, an activist citizen, a loyal brother. Here is an Emerson who knew how to laugh, who was self-doubting as well as self-reliant, and who became the greatest intellectual adventurer of his age. Richardson has, as much as possible, let Emerson speak for himself through his published works, his many journals and notebooks, his letters, his reported conversations. This is not merely a study of Emerson's writing and his influence on others; it is Emerson's life as he experienced it. We see the failed minister, the struggling writer, the political reformer, the poetic liberator. The Emerson of this book not only influenced Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost, he also inspired Nietzsche, William James, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Jorge Luis Borges. Emerson's timeliness is persistent and striking: his insistence that literature and science are not separate cultures, his emphasis on the worth of every individual, his respect for nature. Richardson gives careful attention to the enormous range of Emerson's readings—from Persian poets to George Sand—and to his many friendships and personal encounters—from Mary Moody Emerson to the Cherokee chiefs in Boston—evoking both the man and the times in which he lived. Throughout this book, Emerson's unquenchable vitality reaches across the decades, and his hold on us endures.

Mythic Archetypes in Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mythic Archetypes in Ralph Waldo Emerson PDF Author: Richard R. O'Keefe
Publisher: Kent State University Press
ISBN: 9780873385183
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This work explores Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays as mythic prose poems, suggesting a new approach to the practical criticism of his works. It presents a balanced selection of works from Emerson's early and late career and provides insightful readings of Circles and the Divinity School Address.

The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson PDF Author: Richard G. Geldard
Publisher: Richard Geldard
ISBN: 9780970109736
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
No one who has felt the life-changing pull of Emerson's enormous planetary mind has ever doubted his power or his greatness, though we are often puzzled to know whether he is primarily a poet, an essayist or a philosopher. Richard Geldard is not puzzled at all by this; he has written a book that plainly shows Emerson to be essentially a teacher, the Socrates of Concord, a man with a message that we need to hear today. Previous generations "beheld God and nature face to face," Emerson says, and adds provocatively that we moderns seem able only to see those things through the eyes of the earlier generations. "Why," he asks-and the question is intended to shatter our complacency-"Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?" Emerson's life was devoted to showing how one may still attain an original, that is to say, an authentic, relation to the universe, and Geldard's book aims to focus and distill the famously dispersed Emerson and put his central teachings into the modern reader's hand. Previous edition titled The Esoteric Emerson: the Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Click here to read an interview with the author, Richard Geldard

Natural History of Intellect

Natural History of Intellect PDF Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American essays
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description


Nature and Selected Essays

Nature and Selected Essays PDF Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014243762X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
An indispensible look at Emerson's influential life philosophy Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson unburdened his young country of Europe's traditional sense of history and showed Americans how to be creators of their own circumstances. His mandate, which called for harmony with, rather than domestication of, nature, and for a reliance on individual integrity, rather than on materialistic institutions, is echoed in many of the great American philosophical and literary works of his time and ours, and has given an impetus to modern political and social activism. Larzer Ziff's introduction to this collection of fifteen of Emerson's most significant writings provides the important backdrop to the society in which Emerson lived during his formative years. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.