Baker brings to life Emerson and his circle of friends--Hawthorne, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, and others. the result is a vivid and textured mosaic of not just their interrelationships, but of their daily lives--what they ate, what they wore, what they did for entertainment, what was valued, what was not, and how they managed life. Photos.
The enormous critical resurgence of interest in Ralph Waldo Emerson over the past fifteen years has restored the `Sage of Concord' to his former role as an American icon. At the same time, this renewed interest raises old historical and critical questions about his place in American Transcendentalism, and in American culture generally. This collection of essays seeks to address the variety of critical questions about Emerson and to reevaluate his significance through his own metaphors of insight and influence, particularly that of the `circle'.ROBERT E. BURKHOLDER is Associate Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University; WESLEY T. MOTTis Professor of English at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Contributors: ROBERT A. GROSS, ALBERT J. VON FRANK, LEN GOUGEON, RONALD A. BOSCO, FRANK SHUFFELTON, PHYLLIS COLE, ROBERT D. RICHARDSON JR, DAVID M. ROBINSON, DANIEL SHEALY, HELEN R. DEESE, KENT P. LJUNGQUIST, GARY L. COLLISON, PHILIP F. GURA
In the spring of 1871, Ralph Waldo Emerson boarded a train in Concord, Massachusetts, bound for a month-and-a-half-long tour of California—an interlude that became one of the highlights of his life. On their journey across the American West, he and his companions would take in breathtaking vistas in the Rockies and along the Pacific Coast, speak with a young John Muir in the Yosemite Valley, stop off in Salt Lake City for a meeting with Brigham Young, and encounter a diversity of communities and cultures that would challenge their Yankee prejudices. Based on original research employing newly discovered documents, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson maps the public story of this group’s travels onto the private story of Emerson’s final years, as aphasia set in and increasingly robbed him of his words. Engaging and compelling, this travelogue makes it clear that Emerson was still capable of wonder, surprise, and friendship, debunking the presumed darkness of his last decade.
This gathering of eleven original essays with a substantive introduction brings the traditional image of Emerson the Transcendentalist face-to-face with an emerging image of Emerson the reformer. The Emerson Dilemma highlights the conflict between Emerson’s philosophical attraction to solitary contemplation and the demands of activism compelled by the logic of his own writings. The essays cover Emerson’s reform thought and activism from his early career as a Unitarian minister through his reaction to the Civil War. In addition to Emerson’s antislavery position, the collection covers his complex relationship to the early women’s rights movement and American Indian removal. Individual essays also compare Emerson’s reform ethics with those of his wife, Lidian Jackson Emerson, his aunt Mary Moody, Henry David Thoreau, John Brown, and Margaret Fuller. The Emerson who emerges from this volume is one whose Transcendentalism is explicitly politicized; thus, we see him consciously mediating between the opposing forces of the world he “thought” and the world in which he lived.
There is no question that Emerson has maintained his place as one of the seminal figures in American history and literature. In his time, he was the acknowledged leader of the Transcendentalist movement and his poetic legacy, education ideals, and religious concepts are integral to the formation of American intellectual life. In this volume, Joel Myerson, one of the leading experts on this period, has gathered together sparkling new essays that discuss Emerson as a product of his times. Individual chapters provide an extended biographical study of Emerson and his effect on American life, followed by studies of his concept of individualism, nature and natural science, religion, antislavery, and women's rights.
The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers includes both academic and non-academic philosophers, anda large number of female and minority thinkers whose work has been neglected. It includes those intellectualsinvolved in the development of psychology, pedagogy, sociology, anthropology, education, theology, politicalscience, and several other fields, before these disciplines came to be considered distinct from philosophy in thelate nineteenth century.Each entry contains a short biography of the writer, an exposition and analysis of his or her doctrines and ideas, abibliography of writings, and suggestions for further reading. While all the major post-Civil War philosophers arepresent, the most valuable feature of this dictionary is its coverage of a huge range of less well-known writers,including hundreds of presently obscure thinkers. In many cases, the Dictionary of Modern AmericanPhilosophers offers the first scholarly treatment of the life and work of certain writers. This book will be anindispensable reference work for scholars working on almost any aspect of modern American thought.
Drawing attention to a cluster of later, rarely studied works by three authors. Identifying a line of writing from Ralph Waldo Emerson s Conduct of Life to Nathaniel Hawthorne s posthumously published Elixir of Life manuscripts to Herman Melville s Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, Martin Kevorkian demonstrates how these authors wrestled with their sense of vocational calling.
