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Transcendentalism

Emerson's Main Works

The American Scholar (1837)

by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

  • Nature 1836
  • Essays (First Series) 1841
  • Essays (Second Series) 1844
  • Poems 1847
  • Miscellanies 1849
  • Representative Men 1850
  • English Traits 1856
  • Conduct of Life 1860
  • Society and Solitude 1870
  • Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and R.W. Emerson 1883

Main Themes

  • The whole man (scholar or man thinking)
  • The importance of education
  • The necessity of action
  • The peril of dogma in society
  • The development of an American culture

Analysis of "The American Scholar"

Literary Devices

Literatura Inglesa III

Teachers: Mgtr. Mariana Mussetta

Prof. Ana Eugenia Ceballos

Student: Yanina Gace

Date: 24th August 2020

Simile: "...it detaches itself from the life like a ripe fruit"

Repetition: "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds."

Enumeration: "Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier."

Metaphor:

"The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man."

Reference: "Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, John Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books."

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Biography

Works Cited

The man thinking...

  • "He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart."
  • is a whole man
  • is a man of talent, inspiration for others
  • values books as sources of inspiration that leads to essential connection between their soul and the world, the universe, and God
  • explores and creates their own truths
  • is self-reliant, thinks and starts from their own sight of principles
  • is the one that will create a truly American culture
  • Originally entitled "An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, [Massachusetts,] August 31, 1837"
  • Essay
  • Audience: selected group of American scholars and American individuals
  • Written in first person singular and plural
  • Tone: erudite - celebratory

Works Consulted

Structure

Introduction:

Addresses the audience directly

Introduces the scholar as a function of the whole man

Three influences:

Of nature: "So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess"

Of the past and books: "Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst"

Of action: "The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power"

Duties of the American Scholar

Conclusion:

Proposes an evolutionary development of civilization, a new era. An American culture.

  • Born in 1803 in Boston and died in 1882
  • Was a prolific essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet
  • Raised by a conservative Unitarian family of a long line of ministers
  • His life was shaped by many premature deaths in his family
  • Graduated from Harvard in 1817
  • Entered the Harvard Divinity School and became a preacher in 1824
  • In 1829 married Ellen Tucker, who died shortly after
  • Traveled extensively in Europe and returned to the USA to begin his career of lecturing.
  • In 1835 married Lydia Jackson, with whom he had four children
  • Was part of the Transcendental Club
  • In 1840 began a magazine, The Dial

Historical Context

Cultural Context

Conclusion

Thank you

TRANSCENDENTALISM or THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE

  • Westward expansion (19th century)
  • War of 1812
  • Monroe Doctrine (1823)
  • The Indian Removal Act (1830)
  • Abolitionist movements (1830s)
  • Texas independence (1836) and annexation (1845)
  • Mexican War (1846-1848)

The American Scholar strikes the keynote of Emerson's philosophical, poetical, and moral teachings. In fact he had, as every great teacher has, only a limited number of principles and theories to teach. These principles of life can all be enumerated in twenty words-self-reliance, culture, intellectual and moral independence, the divinity of nature and man, the necessity of labor, and high ideals.

(qtd. in Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2005)

  • Flourished primarily in Massachusetts (Concord and Boston) in the 19th century (between the 1830s and 1850s)
  • Influenced by German and British Romanticism and Kant's principle of intuitive knowledge
  • Considered a loose collection of eclectic ideas about literature, philosophy, religion, social reform, and the general state of American culture
  • Emphasized the role of the mind itself in actively shaping experience and the integration of spirit and matter
  • Nature as the source of spiritual force
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