Source: Unitarian . . . : RWE

| Top | Selected Bibliography: Books

Allen, Gay Wilson. Waldo Emerson: A Biography. NY: Viking P, 1981.PS1631 A7

Baker, Carlos. Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait. NY: Viking, 1996.

Bauerlein, Mark. The Pragmatic Mind: Explorations in the Psychology of Belief. Durham: Duke UP, 1997.

Bridges, William E. Spokesmen for the Self: Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, 1971. PS507 B743

Brown, Lee R. The Emerson Museum: Practical Romanticism and the Pursuit of the Whole. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997.

Burkholder, Robert E. and Joel Myerson. Critical Essays on Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983. PS1638 .C74

Cameron, Kenneth Walter. Young Emerson's Transcendental Vision; an Exposition of his World View with an Analysis of the Structure, Backgrounds, and Meaning of Nature, 1971. Folio PS1642 B6 C33

Cheyfitz, Eric. The Trans-Parent : Sexual Politics in the Language of Emerson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981. PS1638 C54

Ellison, Julie K. Emerson's Romantic Style. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. PS1644 .E43

Garvey, T. Gregory. ed. The Emerson Dilemma: Essays on Emerson and Social Reform. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2000.

Hednut, Robert K. The Aesthetics of Ralph Waldo Emerso: The Materials and Methods of His Poetry. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1996.

Howe, Irving. The American Newness : Culture and Politics in the Age of Emerson. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986. PS1633 .H6 198

Ihrig, Mary Alice. Emerson's Transcendental Vocabulary: A Concordance. NY: Garland, 1982. PS1645 .I5

Irey, Eugene F. A Concordance to Five Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson : Nature, The American Scholar, The Divinity School address, Self-reliance, Fate. NY: Garland, 1981. PS1645 .I73

Jacobson, David. Emerson's Pragmatic Vision: The Dance of the Eye. University Park: Penn State UP, 1993.

Konvitz, Milton R. and Stephen E. Whicher, ed. Emerson: a Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1962. PS1631 .K6

Konvitz, Milton R., ed. The Recognition of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Criticism since 1837. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P,1972. PS1638 K6

Leary, Lewis. Ralph Waldo Emerson : An Interpretive Essay. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980. PS1638 .L4

Levin, Jonathan. The Poetics of Transition: Emerson, Pragmatism & American Literary Modernism. Durham: Duke UP, 1999.

Mott, Wesley T., and Robert E. Burkholder. eds. Emersonian Circles: Essays in Honor of Joel Myerson. Rochester, NY: U of Rochester P, 1996.

Myerson, Joel. ed. A Historical Guide to Ralph Waldo Emerson. NY: Oxford UP, 1999.

Neufeldt, Leonard. The House of Emerson. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1982. PS1638 .N48

Packer, B. L. Emerson's Fall : A New Interpretation of the Major Essays. NY: Continuum, 1982. PS1638 .P28

Poirier, Jr. Richard, ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson. NY: Oxford UP, 1990. PS1603 .P55

--- . The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian Reflections. NY: Random, 1987. PS25 .P6

Porte, Joel. ed. Emerson, Prospect and Retrospect. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982. PS1638 .E42

- - -, and Saundra Morris. eds. The Cambridge Companion to RWE. Cambridge UP, 1999.

- - -, and Saundra Morris. eds. Emerson's Prose and Poetry: A Norton Critical Edition. NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001.

Richardson Jr., Robert D. Emerson: The Mind on Fire. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.

Rowe, John Carlos. At Emerson's Tomb: The Politics of Classical American Literature. NY: Columbia UP, 1997.

Sealts, Merton M., and Alfred R. Ferguson. Emerson's Nature; Origin, Growth, Meaning. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1979. PS1613 S4

Van-Cromphour, Gustaaf. Emerson's Ethics. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1999.

von Frank, Albert J. chief editor. The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 4 vols. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1992. (Sermons of RWE)

Waggoner, Hyatt H. Emerson as Poet. Princeton: UP, 1974. PS1638 W3

Yannella, Donald. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982. PS1638 .Y36

Yoder, R. A. Emerson and the Orphic Poet in America. Berkeley: U of California P, 1978. PS1638 Y6

| Top | Selected Bibliography: Articles

Adams, Richard P. "The Basic Contradiction in Emerson." Emerson Society Q. 55 (1969): 106-10.

Auten, Janet G. "Reading/Writing Nature: Teaching with Transcendental Textbooks." CEA Critic 54.1 (Fall 1991): 62-66.

Bishop, Jonathon. "Emerson and Christianity." Renascence: Essays on Value in Literature 50.3-4 (Sprg-Sumr 1998): 221-37.

Bufkin, Kathryn. "'By Their Fruits, Ye Shall Know Them': The Theological Background of Emerson's 'Thoreau'. Esq : a journal of the american renaissance 42.1 (1996): 51-69.

Burns, Philip J. "Emerson's `The Rhodora'". The Explicator 47.4 (Sum 89): 24-.

Burkholder, Robert E. "The Radical Emerson: Politics in `The American scholar.'" ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 34.1-2 (1988): 37-57.

Cayton, Mary K. "The Making of An American Prophet: Emerson, His Audiences, and the Rise of Popular Culture Industry in Nineteenth-Century America." American Historical Review 92 (1987): 597-620.

Cayton, Mary K. "The Prisonhouse of Emerson." American Quarterly 43.1 (Mar 1991) 110(9).

Chandran, K. Narayana. "The Pining Gods and Sages in Emerson's `Brahma.'" English Language Notes 27.1 (SEP 1989): 55-.

Ellison, Julie. "Tears for Emerson: Essays, Second Series." The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.

Habich, Robert D. "Emerson's Reluctant Foe: Andrews Norton and the Transcendental Controversy." New England Q. 65.2 (1992): 208-237.

Harris, Kenneth M. "Emersonian Self-Reliance and Self-Deception Theory." Philosophy and Literature 15.2 (Oct. 1991): 286-94.

Hodder, Alan D. "`After a High Negative Way': Emerson's "Self-Reliance" and the Rhetoric of Conversion." The Harvard Theological Review 84.4 (Oct 1991): 423-.

Kazin, Alfred. "Where Would Emerson Find His Scholar Now?" The World 2.4 (1988): 4-7.

Keller, Karl. "From Christianity to Transcendentalism: A Note on Emerson's Use of Conceit." American Literature 39 (1967): 94-98.

Lauter, Paul. "Truth and Nature: Emerson's Use of Two Complex Words." English Literary Journal 27 (Mar. 1960): 66-85.

Matle, John H. "Emerson and Brook Farm." Emerson Society Q. 58 (1970): 84-88.

Milder, Robert. "Emerson's Two Conversions." Emerson Society Q. 33 (1987): 20-34.

Morris, Saundra. "The Threshold Poem, Emerson, and 'The Sphinx'." American literature 69.3 (Sep 1997): 547-571.

Norwood, Kyle. "'Somewhat Comes of it All': The Structure of Emerson's "Experience." Atq : the american transcendental quarterly 9.1 (Mar 1905): 21-41.

O'Keefe, Richard R. "The Rats in the Wall: Animals in Emerson's 'History'." Atq : the american transcendental quarterly 9.1 (Jun 1906): 111-123.

Porte, Joel. "Emerson, Thoreau, and the Double Consciousness." New England Q. 41 (1968): 40-50.

--- . "Nature as Symbol: Emerson's Noble Doubt." New England Q. 37 (1964): 453-76.

Putz, Manfred. "Emerson and Kant Once Again: Is Emerson's Thought a Philosophy Before, After, Beside, or Beyond Kant?" Religion and Philosophy 2 (1987): 621-40.

Railton, Stephen. "`Assume an Identity of Sentiment': Rhetoric and Audience in Emerson's "Divinity School Address.'" Prospects 9 (1984): 31-47.

Sealts, Merton. "Emerson on the Scholar, 1833-37." PMLA 85.2 (Mar. 1970): 185-95.

Schweitzer, Ivy. "Transcendental Sacramentals: `The Lord's Supper' and Emerson's Doctrine of Form." New England Q. 61 (1988): 398-418.

Selinger, Eric M. "'Too Pathetic, Too Pitiable': Emerson's Lessons in Love's Philosophy." Esq : a journal of the american renaissance 40.2 (1994): 139-.

Smith, Curtis D. "The Concept of Self-Identity in the Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson." Religious Humanism 26.3 (Sum. 1992): 123-.

Smith, Gayle L. "Emerson's Prose Style: Following Nature with Language." American Transcendental Q. 56 (Mar. 1985): 19-30.

--- . "Reading Emerson on the Right Side of the Brain." Modern Language Studies 15.2 (Spr. 1985): 24-31.

Strauch, Carl F. "Hatred's Swift Repulsions: Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Others." Studies in Romanticism 7 (1968): 65-103.

Thomas, Joseph M. "'The Property of My Own Book': Emerson's Poems (1847) and the Literary Marketplace." New england quarterly 69.3 (Sep 1996): 406-426.

Thompson, Ralph. "Emerson and The Offering for 1829." American Literature 6.2 (May 1934): 151-57.

Walcutt, Charles C. "Walden as a Response to 'The American Scholar'." Arizona Q. 34 (1978): 5-30.

Wider, Sarah. "What Did the Minister Mean: Emerson's Sermons and Their Audience." ESQ 34.1-2 (1988): 1-.

Yoder, R. A. "Toward the `Titmouse Dimension': The Development of Emerson's Poetic Style." PMLA 87.2 (Mar. 1972): 255-70.

Wilson, Eric. "Emerson and Electromagnetism." Esq : a journal of the american renaissance 42.2 (1996): 93-125.

---. "Weaving: Breathing: Thinking: The Poetics of Emerson's Nature." Atq : the american transcendental quarterly 10.1 (Mar 1996): 5-25.

| Top | Major Essays and Lectures

Nature (1836)

This essay is considered the "gospel" of American Transcendentalism. It has an Introduction and eight chapters: 1. Nature 2. Commodity 3. Beauty 4. Language 5. Discipline 6. Idealism 7. Spirit 8. Prospects. The major thesis of the essay, in Emerson's words, is that we should now "enjoy an original relation to the universe," and not become dependent on past experiences of others and on holy books, creeds and dogma.

Contemporary Comments on Nature

1. "I have just finished reading Nature by R. W. Emerson. It is a beautiful work. Mr. E. attempts to show the meaning of Nature to the minds of men. It is the production of a spiritualist, subordinating the visible and outward to the inward and invisible. Nature becomes the transparent emblem of the soul. Psyche animates and fills the earth and external things." - A. Bronson Alcott, 1836

2. "We find beautiful writing and sound philosophy in the little work, but the effect is injured by occasional vagueness of expression, and by a vein of mysticism that pervades the writer's whole course of thought. The highest praises that could be accorded to it is that it is a suggestive book for one who can read it without tasking his faculties to the utmost, and relapsing into severe fits of meditation." - Frances Bowen, 1837

3. "Your little azur-coloured Nature gave me true satisfaction. I read it, and then lent it about to all my acquaintances that had a sense for such things, from whom a similar verdict always came back. You say it is the first chapter of something greater. I call it rather the Foundation and Groundplan on which you may build whatsoever of great and true has been given you to build," - Thomas Carlyle, February 13, 1837

4. "... we would call all those together who have feared that the spirit of poetry was dead, to rejoice that such a poem as Nature is written. It grows upon us as we reperuse it. It proves to us, that the only true and perfect mind is the poetic." - Anonymous, 1838

Twentieth Century Comments on Nature

1. "Emerson was not a mystic in the usual 'visionary' sense of the word. He was not seeking in the angle of vision an escape from the world; as it formed, the angle of vision was to make 'use' of the world. But the mystical union, for him, was an epistemological necessity. Vision, he said of the inner seeing of the mind, is not like the vision of the eye, but is union with the things known." - Sherman Paul, The Angle of Vision, 1952

2. "The essay itself seems like a stepping-stone than a stumbling block in Emerson's career; the last of his apprentice exercises rather than the first of his mature works; a thing that had to be done before he could do something better, to be put behind him before he could go ahead." - Richard P. Adams, 1954

3. "Nature is the gospel of the new faith rather than, like Thoreau's Walden, a record of an experience of earth. Lifted by the excitement of recognition to the plane of prose-poetry, it is nevertheless a concise statement of the 'First Philosophy'. The primary assumption of this essay is that man, whether regarded individually or generically, is the starting point of all philosophic speculation. His functions, his relations, and his destiny are its only concerns." - Robert E. Spiller, 1949

"The American Scholar" (1837)

Delivered as a lecture to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Harvard College, on August 31, 1837, "The American Scholar" is popular and important in expressing the practical aspects of Transcendentalism. Emerson prods the students to become more confident in their abilities and to take pride in native Americanism: "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. ... We will walk on our own feet, we will work with our own hands, we will speak our own minds."

"The Divinity School Address" (1838)

A lecture addressed to the senior class at the Harvard Divinity College on July 15, 1838. The important theme of this lecture is that truth cannot be presented as doctrines or creeds. Emerson says, "It (the truth) cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul." He goes on to tell the graduating class to be original and not imitative.

"Self-Reliance" (1841)

This essay elaborates further on the familiar Emersonian thesis - trust yourself. This is also a very popular essay written in forceful and memorable language. "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide ... " "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."

| Top | Emerson's Poetry

"I am born a poet, of a low class without doubt, yet a poet. That is my nature and vocation." - RWE in a letter to Lydia Jackson, February 1835

Comments from RWE's famous essay "The Poet" 1844:

"The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. …

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. … For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor (teacher); he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas, and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. …

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,&endash;a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. The poet has a new thought: he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For, the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet."

At Harvard, Emerson was selected as the class poet of 1821. His many poems can be grouped together in broad categories (with few examples) like:

• Public, political, and patriotic ("Concord Hymn," "Boston Hymn," "Voluntaries)
• Nature poems ("Berrying," "The Rhodora," "The Snow-Storm," "Wood-notes," "Musketaquid," "May-day," "The Adirondacs," "My Garden," "The Titmouse," "Seashore)
• Personal poems ("To Ellen," "Thine Eyes Still Shined," "Threnody" "Terminus," "Grace)
• Philosophical, religious and aesthetic ("The Sphinx," "Each and All," "The Problem," "Uriel," "Hamatreya," "Ode Inscribed to W. H. Channing," "Give All to Love," "Initial, Dtmonic, and Celestial Love," "Merlin," "Bacchus," "Saadi," "Brahma," "Days," "Two Rivers," and "Waldeinsamkeit")

The popular ten:

"Each and All," "The Problem," "Hamatreya," "The Rhodora," "The Snow-Storm," "Ode Inscribed to W. H. Channing," "Brahma," "Concord Hymn," "Days," and "Terminus."

The less popular ten:

"Uriel," "The Sphinx," "The Humble-Bee," "Woodnotes," "Give All to Love," "Merlin," "Bacchus," "Threnody," "Grace," and "Two Rivers."

| Top | Study Questions

1. What elements of Transcendentalism are evident in the short poem at the beginning of Nature?

2. How does Emerson characterize his age? How does he characterize its relation to the past?

3. What is the distinction Emerson makes between Nature and the Soul?

4. How accurate is Oliver Wendell Holmes's description of "The American Scholar" as "our intellectual Declaration of Independence." In particular, discuss the three influences on the scholar and Emerson's views about them.

5. In his "Divinity School Address," Emerson deplores the defects of historical Christianity. Discuss these defects and Emerson's solutions.

6. In what ways was Emerson a radical? Discuss his break with the Puritan faith and his disagreement with Channing's Unitarianism.

7. Consider the anecdote in "Self-Reliance" of a valued advisor who was "wont to importune" Emerson "with the dear old doctrines of the church." What is going on in this exchange? What does it mean to say that the impulses may be "from below"? How adequate a moral position is the statement, "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature"?

8. Consider Emerson's argument, in "The Poet," that it is "not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem, ... a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own ..."

9. Robert Frost said that it took him thirty years to grasp the meaning of Emerson's "Brahma." What is most puzzling and difficult about the poem? What similar difficulties exist in Emerson's essays? Compare the voice of "Brahma" with the voice of the "Earth-Song" in Emerson's "Hamatreya." Note Mark Twain's parody of Emerson and "Brahma" in his "Whittier Birthday Dinner Speech."

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