The Emerson Brothers

The Emerson Brothers PDF Author: Ronald A. Bosco
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195140362
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
Features a narrative and epistolary biography, based upon the correspondence exchanged among the four Emerson brothers and the women who were most important to them. The Emerson brothers' correspondence is the last body of personal writings remaining in manuscript from Ralph Waldo Emerson and his extended family.

The Emerson Brothers

The Emerson Brothers PDF Author: Ronald A. Bosco
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195140362
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
Features a narrative and epistolary biography, based upon the correspondence exchanged among the four Emerson brothers and the women who were most important to them. The Emerson brothers' correspondence is the last body of personal writings remaining in manuscript from Ralph Waldo Emerson and his extended family.

Emerson

Emerson PDF Author: Robert D. Richardson Jr.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520918371
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 684

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Book Description
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.

Emerson's Brother

Emerson's Brother PDF Author: Philip Lee Williams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780881462746
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Few people know that noted essayist, poet, and sage Ralph Waldo Emerson had a mentally challenged brother. Now, in a deeply moving novel in letters, noted writer Philip Lee Williams imagines the last year of this brother's sad but transcendent life as he lives with a farm family in Massachusetts. Emerson's Brother shows how this brother, Bulkeley, deals in his own way with many of the themes Waldo did, including nature, self-reliance, and love. Writing letters to his brother and friends such as Henry David Thoreau, Bulkeley Emerson aches with the need to express himself, trapped as he is in the prison of his own genetics. Though Bulkeley's journey toward the end of his life can be agonizing and filled with unfilled longing, there is a quiet acceptance, too, as he nears his time to become part of nature itself."This fascinating novel about the least-known Emerson brother brings to life the Transcendental currents of the time and shows how hard it was, for all the Emersons, to live up to the expectations of their forefathers. Fans of Henry Thoreau and Waldo Emerson, as well as anyone with a brother, will find this novel an emotional recreation of an important period and place in our history."-Joel Myerson, Carolina Distinguished Professor of American Literature,Emeritus, University of South Carolina, and co-author of The Emerson Brothers: A Fraternal Biography in Letters.

The Dangers of Passion: The Transcendental Friendship of Ralph Waldo Emerson & Margaret Fuller

The Dangers of Passion: The Transcendental Friendship of Ralph Waldo Emerson & Margaret Fuller PDF Author: Daniel Bullen
Publisher: Levellers Press
ISBN: 1937146081
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
Ralph Waldo Emerson never tried to reinvent the institution of marriage, but his close friend, the writer Margaret Fuller, was freer to follow the dictates of self-reliance, and choose how she would make her commitments Born in 1810, Fuller received a boy's first-class education, and by the time she was in her twenties, she was so well-read that she had given up any hope of a normal woman's role, in marriage or in society. Still unmarried at thirty, Fuller pressed Emerson for an intimacy deeper than their friendship. Emerson would not betray his marriage, but in their journals, both writers questioned the value of monogamous marriage for men and women of genius. When she realized that Emerson was not as radical as his writing suggested, Fuller went to Europe, where she married an Italian Count. Giovanni Ossoli was barely literate, but Fuller thought that she could still fulfill other sides of herself in other relationships. Fuller never got to live out her experiment in marriage: she and her husband died in a shipwreck on returning to America in 1850. But the questions Fuller's life had raised-about how to reconcile marriage and self-reliance-are still echoing now, in our discomfort with marriage-and with any of the alternatives. An enlightening and emotionally charged narrative, The Dangers of Passion recounts the passionate friendship in which Emerson and Fuller: First learned to trust themselves and their hearts before any other authority; Discovered the delightful freedom of shared intellectual passion; Worked together to advance a philosophy of Transcendental self-reliance; Quarreled over Emerson's inability to give Fuller deeper fulfillment; Questioned the value of marriage for men and women of genius; Consoled themselves in marriages that lacked the intellectual and philosophical passion of their friendship.

CliffsNotes on Thoreau, Emerson, and Transcendentalism

CliffsNotes on Thoreau, Emerson, and Transcendentalism PDF Author: Leslie P Wilson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 054418422X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format. CliffsNotes on Thoreau, Emerson, and Transcendentalism explores in depth, but also in easy-to-understand terms, transcendentalism—the religious, political, and literary movement that captured the minds of such literary figures as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the first half of the 19th century. This guide helps you to understand the various tenets of transcendentalism, as well as how Thoreau and Emerson became the two most well-known figures associated with the movement and how the transcendentalist philosophy is reflected in their work. In addition to introducing you to the basics of understanding transcendentalism, this guide also gives you the following: Examinations of the lives of Thoreau and Emerson Detailed summaries of and commentaries on many of their transcendentalist writings, such as Emerson's Nature and Thoreau's Walden Critical essays on Emerson and Thoreau's reputation and influence A review section that tests your knowledge A Resource Center full of books, articles, and Internet sites Classic literature or modern-day treasure—you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

Emerson in Context

Emerson in Context PDF Author: Wesley Mott
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107028019
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
This collection explores the many intellectual and social contexts in which Emerson lived, thought and wrote.

Understanding Emerson

Understanding Emerson PDF Author: Kenneth S. Sacks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691223688
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
A seminal figure in American literature and philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson is considered the apostle of self-reliance, fully alive within his ideas and disarmingly confident about his innermost thoughts. Yet the circumstances around "The American Scholar" oration--his first great public address and the most celebrated talk in American academic history--suggest a different Emerson. In Understanding Emerson, Kenneth Sacks draws on a wealth of contemporary correspondence and diaries, much of it previously unexamined, to reveal a young intellectual struggling to define himself and his principles. Caught up in the fierce dispute between his Transcendentalist colleagues and Harvard, the secular bastion of Boston Unitarianism and the very institution he was invited to honor with the annual Phi Beta Kappa address, Emerson agonized over compromising his sense of self-reliance while simultaneously desiring to meet the expectations of his friends. Putting aside self-doubts and a resistance to controversy, in the end he produced an oration of extraordinary power and authentic vision that propelled him to greater awareness of social justice, set the standard for the role of the intellectual in America, and continues to point the way toward educational reform. In placing this singular event within its social and philosophical context, Sacks opens a window into America's nineteenth-century intellectual landscape as well as documenting the evolution of Emerson's idealism. Engagingly written, this book, which includes the complete text of "The American Scholar," allows us to appreciate fully Emerson's brilliant rebuke of the academy and his insistence that the most important truths derive not from books and observation but from intuition within each of us. Rising defiantly before friend and foe, Emerson triumphed over his hesitations, redirecting American thought and pedagogy and creating a personal tale of quiet heroism.

Understanding Emerson

Understanding Emerson PDF Author: Kenneth Sacks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691099820
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
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Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims

Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims PDF Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674053786
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description
Letters and Social Aims, published in 1875, contains essays originally published early in the 1840s as well as those that were the product of a collaborative effort among Emerson, his daughter Ellen Tucker Emerson, his son Edward Waldo Emerson, and his literary executor James Eliot Cabot. The volume takes up the topics of Poetry and Imagination, Social Aims, Eloquence, Resources, The Comic, Quotation and Originality, Progress of Culture, Persian Poetry, Inspiration, Greatness, and, appropriately for Emerson's last published book, Immortality. The historical introduction demonstrates for the first time the decline in Emerson's creative powers after 1865; the strain caused by the preparation of a poetry anthology and delivery of lectures at Harvard during this time; the devastating effect of a house fire in 1872; and how the Emerson children and Cabot worked together to enable Emerson to complete the book. The textual introduction traces this collaborative process in detail and also provides new information about the genesis of the volume as a response to a proposed unauthorized British edition of Emerson's works. Historical Introduction by Ronald A. BoscoNotes and Parallel Passages by Glen M. JohnsonText Established and Textual Introduction and Apparatus by Joel Myerson

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson PDF Author: Mark C. Long
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 1603293752
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
A leader of the transcendentalist movement and one of the country's first public intellectuals, Ralph Waldo Emerson has been a long-standing presence in American literature courses. Today he is remembered for his essays, but in the nineteenth century he was also known as a poet and orator who engaged with issues such as religion, nature, education, and abolition. This volume presents strategies for placing Emerson in the context of his time, for illuminating his rhetorical techniques, and for tracing his influence into the present day and around the world. Part 1, "Materials," offers guidance for selecting classroom editions and information on Emerson's life, contexts, and reception. Part 2, "Approaches," provides suggestions for teaching Emerson's works in a variety of courses, not only literature but also creative writing, religion, digital humanities, media studies, and environmental studies. The essays in this section address Emerson's most frequently anthologized works, such as Nature and "Self-Reliance," along with other texts including sermons, lectures, journals, and poems.