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Title: Understanding Emerson : "The American Scholar" and His Struggle for Self-Reliance by Kenneth S. Sacks ISBN: 0-691-09982-0 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 10 March, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)
Rating: 3
Summary: The American Oracle finds his voice
Comment: In the 1830s, the new movement of Transcendentalism was flowering in New England, and coming into conflict with established Unitarianism. Abolitionism was coming to political life. Old friendships among Boston's upper-classes were strained, and new alliances forged, as the times shifted. These long-extinct controversies are minutely chronicled here, with the end of showing how formative they were on Ralph Waldo Emerson. This book tells how Emerson found his place in this flood of events.
I chiefly know Emerson as an aphorist, so it was mildly surprising to read how his contemporaries viewed his Lyceum lectures in much the same light. "A poet, not a philosopher" is the general reaction to his early sallies. Emerson was first-rate, from a family of first-rate men, and everyone knew it. His intellectual promise was generally conceded, but his offerings were faulted for lacking in coherence, notable mostly for brilliant _bon mots_. Emerson reproaches himself in his journals for not tackling the big issues of the day. When things finally click in his mind and he produces _The American Scholar_, the impracticality of its prescriptions is not diminished by its ringing tones.
Yet I suspect that Emerson's slipperiness contributed to his works' staying power. If he had constructed a tidy, interlaced, balanced philosophical system, then he would have been comprehended, absorbed, and done with long ago. But as his best sentences urge the reader on, rather than drawing a map, they continue to inspire down to this day. "Hitch your wagon to a star", indeed.
The book is valuable for introducing the reader to the Bostonian intelligentsia of the 1820s and 1830s, and for reproducing this stage in Emerson's career. Even Thomas Carlyle makes a cameo appearance, as Emerson's moral and financial support helps establish the Scot's reputation in the U.S. I learned a lot--and will probably learn a lot more if I make time to re-read this book. It's the sort of work that makes you want to go and study up, so that you can come back and tackle it again; it's that good.
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Title: Emerson by Lawrence Buell ISBN: 0674011392 Publisher: Belknap Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library Paperback Classics) by RALPH WALDO EMERSON, BROOKS ATKINSON, Mary Oliver ISBN: 0679783229 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 12 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Richard G. Geldard, Robert Richardson ISBN: 0970109733 Publisher: Lindisfarne Books Pub. Date: 15 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Emerson: The Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson ISBN: 0520206894 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism by Dean Grodzins ISBN: 080782710X Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Pub. Date: 25 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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