Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, the towering figure of his
  era, had a religious sense of mission. Although
  many accused him of subverting Christianity, he
  explained that, for him "to be a good minister,
  it was necessary to leave the church."
• The address he delivered in 1838 at his alma
  mater, the Harvard Divinity School, made him
  unwelcome at Harvard for 30 years.
• In it, Emerson accused the church of acting "as
  if God were dead" and of emphasizing dogma while
  stifling the spirit.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• Emerson's philosophy has been called
  contradictory, and it is true that he consciously
  avoided building a logical intellectual system
  because such a rational system would have negated
  his Romantic belief in intuition and flexibility.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• In his essay "Self-Reliance," Emerson remarks "A
  foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
  minds." Yet he is remarkably consistent in his
  call for the birth of American individualism
  inspired by nature.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• Most of his major ideas -- the need for a new
  national vision, the use of personal experience,
  the notion of the cosmic Over-Soul, and the
  doctrine of compensation -- are suggested in his
  first publication, Nature (1836).

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• This essay (On Nature) opens
• Our age is retrospective. It builds the
  sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies,
  histories, criticism. The foregoing generations
  beheld God and nature face to face we, through
  their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an
  original relation to the universe? Why should not
  we have a poetry of insight and not of tradition,
  and a religion by revelation to us, and not the
  history of theirs. Embosomed for a season in
  nature, whose floods of life stream around and
  through us, and invite us by the powers they
  supply, to action proportioned to nature, why
  should we grope among the dry bones of the
  past...? The sun shines today also. There is more
  wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands,
  new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own
  works and laws and worship.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• Spiritual vision and practical, aphoristic
  expression make Emerson exhilarating.
• Much of his spiritual insight comes from his
  readings in Eastern religion, especially
  Hinduism, Confucianism, and Islamic Sufism.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• The British critic Matthew Arnold said the most
  important writings in English in the 19th century
  had been Wordsworth's poems and Emerson's essays.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• A great prose-poet, Emerson influenced a long
  line of American poets, including Walt Whitman,
  Emily Dickinson, Edwin Arlington Robinson,
  Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and Robert Frost.
• He is also credited with influencing the
  philosophies of John Dewey, George Santayana,
  Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James.

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References

• Outline of American Literature
  http//usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/gloss.ht
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