LITR 5535: American
Romanticism
Sample Student Research Project, fall 2003
Simone Rieck
21 November 2003
Nature’s
first green is gold,
Her hardest
hue to hold.
Her early
leaf’s a flower;
But only so
an hour.
Then leaf
subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank
to grief,
So dawn goes
down to day.
Nothing gold
can stay.
-
Robert Frost
Nature
in American Literature and Poetry
Introduction
Nature, particularly “an uncultivated or wild area…or a countryside,” provides colors, expression, life, and beauty (Oxford 968). Even the idea of wilderness, with all of its innate beauty, inspires many people, both artistically and philosophically. For some, beauty and nature can cause moments of ecstasy, where they are aesthetically lifted to another plane of consciousness. John Miller, in his essay, “Beauty: A Path to Ecstasy,” explains:
Beauty can lead us from the mundane to the sublime. The beauty of Nature awakens in us the love of beauty; and if we respond deeply, we may experience moments of ecstasy. Beauty [and Nature] inspire the arts, whose very creative process may occasion ecstasy. These experiences reveal that love and bliss form the essence of our own nature. (Abstract)
A beautiful sight in nature evokes unexplainable emotions and feelings within a person. This poses the question, “How can a person possibly describe these feelings brought about by nature?” The following journal is an attempt to understand this question through: a better understanding of aesthetics, a survey of American authors and poets whom often use nature in their works, and research of the differences in Nature writing among authors of Romantic fiction, transcendentalists, and poets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is often referred to as the “philosophy of art” (Lacey 2). In addition to this reference, however, one must understand that the philosophy of art is specifically concerned with the “concepts and problems that arise in connection with works of art,” and it does not apply to one’s “aesthetic experience of nature” (Edwards 36). According to the Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, aesthetics is “the study of beauty and nature in the arts” and can be divided into two approaches: “(1) the philosophical approach, which poses questions relating to the nature or definition of beauty; and (2) the psychological approach, which examines the perception, origins, and effects of beauty” (Murfin & Ray 6). This definition is fundamental to the use of aesthetics as a form of reader’s response. When reading, one must first decide what he or she considers beautiful. With this definition in mind, the reader can document his or her inner reactions to a literary work. Aesthetics allows the reader to react to a work “for the work’s sake.”
The two approaches, as listed in the Bedford definition of aesthetics, consider the aesthetic to be an attitude within a person, or “the aesthetic way of looking at the world” (Edwards 36). In this way of thinking, things, such as a beautiful landscape or work of art, should be savored for their perceptual details instead of for some ulterior purpose. In effect, “In viewing something aesthetically [one] responds to the aesthetic object and what it has to offer [him or her], not to its relation to [his or her] own life,” not for its possible “monetary value,” and not for its ability to “increase [one’s] knowledge” (Edwards 36-37).
History of Aesthetics
Aesthetics and philosophizing about the arts was originated in the West by Plato and was continued by Aristotle. Both philosophers divided art into two groups: visual and literary. Aristotle defines art in three distinguishable kinds of thought: knowing, doing, and making (Edwards 20). Both philosophers believe art involves the pleasure of imitation, the pleasure of beauty, and the pleasure of knowledge. Imitation implies that artists created in an attempt to imitate their own knowledge and experiences with beauty. As a result, art provides others with both knowledge and beauty.
Aesthetics and the philosophy of art took on many forms through the years. In the eighteenth century, the German philosopher, lmmanuel Kant, used aesthetics to “relate the material (art) to the spiritual” (Murfin & Ray 6). He saw the aesthetic as a sort of “universal or divine truth—a realm where words are somehow not just arbitrary signifiers but rather signs with some special status” (Murfin & Ray 6). The late nineteenth century marked the beginning of a philosophical movement called Aestheticism. Followers of this movement valued art and literature for their beauty and “inherent or affective qualities” instead of “practical or moral considerations” (Murfin & Ray 6). The phrase, “art for art’s sake,” originated during this movement.
Survey of American Authors and
Poets
James Fenimore Cooper
(1789-1851)
James Fenimore Cooper is often referred to as America’s first successful novelist. He was born on September 15, 1789, in Burlington, New Jersey, but grew up in Cooperstown, New York. His first book, Precaution, was published in 1820, but his main success and reputation came from his five Leather-Stocking Tales (“James Fenimore Cooper” 460). Each of the Leather-Stocking Tales deals with the U.S. frontier before the American Revolution. Deerslayer, the last written, but first in respect to the life of Leather-Stocking, in particular, takes place in the lush wilderness of New York. Cooper’s use of this landscape seems to serve two purposes: to provide historical framework of the U.S. and to captivate readers with beautiful descriptions. According to H. Daniel Peck, “The term scenery comes from the Greek word for stage, a derivation suggestive of Cooper’s treatment of landscape” (57). Peck goes on to say, “Cooper was more interested in drama’s formality and scenic quality than in its emotional intensity…[He] tended to frame his novelist action in dramatic terms – setting a scene, moving his characters into it, building a confrontation, resolving the action, closing the scene” (57). In theatrical terms, a captivating stage that can be manipulated to fit each scene is desirable. The wilderness Cooper often uses is “at once dangerous and protective, open an enclosed, limitless and delimited, difficult and amenable, wild and formal” (Peck 44).
In an attempt to create historical framework for his readers, Cooper begins Deerslayer, among others, with a detailed description of the landscape:
The incidents of this tale occurred between the years 1740 and 1745, when the settled portions of the colony of New York were confined to the four Atlantic counties, a narrow belt of country on each side of the Hudson, extending from its mouth to the falls near its head, and to a few advanced “neighborhoods” on the Mohawk and the Schoharie. Broad belts of the virgin wilderness not only reached the shores of the first river, but they even crossed it, stretching away into New England…(2)
Cooper could have simply given the years during which the story took place; however, through his descriptions of the “virgin wilderness” and “narrow belt of country,” readers can develop a visual of the scene for the account in store for them. In effect, Deerslayer almost reads like a play, in that, due to the detailed descriptions of the setting, the reader can easily visualize the actions of and drama between the characters.
Along the same lines, Cooper masters the use of the sublime through the character of Deerslayer. When the young frontiersman encounters a beautiful scene, readers can see what he sees and feel what he feels. They are aesthetically lifted to a peaceful state in their enjoyment of the beauty Deerslayer sees. One such scene takes place at the beginning of Deerslayer and Hurry’s journey to the Hutters’:
…The most striking peculiarities of this scene were its solemn solitude and sweet repose. On all sides, wherever the eye turned, nothing met it but the mirrorlike surface of the lake, the placid view of heaven, and the dense setting of the woods. So rich and fleecy were the outlines of the forest, that scarce and opening could be seen, the whole visible earth, from the rounded mountaintop to the water’s edge, presenting one unvaried hue of unbroken verdure. As if vegetation were not satisfied with a triumph so complete, the trees overhung the lake itself, shooting out towards the light; and there were miles along its eastern shore, where a boat might have pulled beneath the branches of dark Rembrandt-looking hemlocks, “quivering aspens,” and melancholy pines. In a word, the hand of man had never yet defaced or deformed any part of this native scene, which lay bathed in the sunlight, a glorious picture of affluent forest grandeur, softened by the balminess of June, and relieved by the beautiful variety afforded by the presence of so broad an expanse of water. (Cooper 18-19)
Cooper’s depiction of the beauty of nature is not only aesthetic in that his words are beautifully poetic, it also evokes within the reader a longing for better times. Cooper, or Deerslayer, is reminiscent of the days before war and population, before man had “defaced or deformed any part” of the New York wilderness.
Deerslayer is only one example of Cooper’s use of elaborate descriptions of natural settings, or his wilderness-like “stage.” Further research will show that his other Leather-Stocking Tales and his well-known sea-faring novels also contain multiple illustrations of beauty and nature. In fact, Cooper most enjoyed the wilderness in his nautical tales, such as The Pilot. According to Daniel Peck, “For Cooper, the sea was the essential wilderness. It was the setting against which he measured all other forms of wilderness space…” (39). For the purposes of this journal, however, Cooper’s nature writing can be summarized in the following quote: “The American forest exhibits in the highest degree the grandeur of repose” (Peck 39).
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Ralph Waldo Emerson is possibly the most respected author from the American Renaissance. In fact, his philosophy and literary works inspired several other highly respected authors of the time, including Henry David Thoreau (who almost entirely gained his reputation from Emerson) and Walt Whitman, and even writers from more recent periods, such as Robert Frost. Emerson was born on May 25, 1803, in Boston (“Ralph Waldo Emerson” 482). He was the son of a Unitarian minister and later became one himself. He grew as a man during periods filled with economic and political growth for the U.S., but he “would have nothing to do with an American civilization, so-called, willing to cover its crimes with cries of manifest destiny and America first” (Porte 11). In fact, Emerson was very outspoken on the issues of America “invading Mexico, oppressing blacks, and denying women equal rights” (Porte 11).
In response to the unsatisfactory changes in the still young country, Emerson and others began the American Transcendentalist Movement. Transcendentalists valued the “ability to discover higher truths intuitively or mystically, without recourse to the sense or logic.” In addition, they suggested, “People can discover moral truths in nature, …with the guidance of their own conscience rather than dogmatic religious doctrine” (Murfin & Ray 488). In his recollection of the movement, Emerson stated, “The mind had become aware of itself. Men grew reflective and intellectual. There was a new consciousness” (Robinson 13). Robinson summarizes, “Transcendentalism was thus a moment in history containing both expansive hope and a sense of strife and embattlement, and marked by the emergence of new intellectual categories, new relations among persons and classes, and new ethical and political imperatives” (13).
Emerson, along with his fellow transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau, was inspired to express the beauty of nature outside the context of society. He was “passionately attached to the natural world, [and] all his life his interest in nature was rooted in his delight in and close observation of nature” (Richardson 97). The end result was Nature, “his first bid for a national and international reputation” (“Ralph Waldo Emerson” 485). Where Cooper’s nature is a captivating background for his overall story, Emerson’s Nature is a philosophical approach to life. In the introduction, Emerson defines nature as “all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME…. Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf (487). In other words, that which is not man made is nature; art, therefore, simply imitates nature. A nature lover can paint or write about a beautiful scene, but few may ever truly appreciate it. Emerson articulates:
The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood…. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, – he is my creature and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me…. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. (487-488)
The delight one feels, according to Emerson, is a harmony between man and nature. Similar to the aesthetic theory, Emerson believes that nature and beauty, when truly appreciated, speak for themselves. A person must allow him or herself to truly enjoy beauty instead of looking for its reward. According to Richardson, Emerson suggests, “Nature bats last, that nature is the law, the final word, the supreme court” (97).
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
When considering Emily Dickinson’s poetry, it is hard to refrain from automatically connecting it to what is known about her life. She lived in her own little world, comprised of “her Lexicon; the things of nature; her books; her letters, which became increasingly the measure of her fulfilled relationships, but especially her poems, in which she explored the truth of her fulfillments and her unfulfillments – with nature, man, and God” (“Emily Dickinson” 1169). Even with the knowledge of her detached existence, one must recognize her talent as a poet. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, and lived out her life in only two houses with her family. Growing up, religion is what first prompted her to write poetry, inspired by her struggle with religion and inspired by the Bible. A fear was instilled in her of damnation from the sermons she experienced in her Unitarian church. In addition, her childhood friends steadily moved away, got married, and had children in an age where there was a high rate of childhood mortality and mortality in childbirth. Dickinson began to isolate herself from others out of fear initially, but later found comfort and inspiration in her solitude. With the help of neighbor, Mabel Todd, Dickinson’s first collection of poems was published in 1890, and a second collection followed shortly after in 1891 (“Emily Dickinson” 1169).
In her lifetime, Emily Dickinson wrote approximately 1800 poems, only seven of which were published when she was alive. Dickinson maintained two themes in most of her poetry: death and nature. According to Elizabeth Little, she found truth in nature’s beauty, but ultimately seemed more comfortable pulling that power from within herself” (4). “By nature Dickinson means the things we see, hear, and feel. She felt happy just being alive and living with nature” (Unit Nine par. 4). In aesthetic terms, for Dickinson nature writing was a psychological expression, but it provided to readers a philosophical look at nature as well as her appreciation of it. Some of her best-known “nature poems” are “I taste a liquor never brewed,” “These are the days when Birds come back,” and “I never saw a Moor.”
Her poem, “I taste a liquor never brewed,” uses alcohol as a metaphor for nature. Its beauty, in effect, intoxicates her. This is evident in her statements, “Yield such an Alcohol,” “Inebriated of air – am I -,” and “I shall but drink the more,” which were a reaction to her visions of “Pearl,” “Dew,” “endless summer days,” and “Butterflies.” This metaphor may also relate to the psychological approach to aesthetics, in that it offers an explanation for the way beauty can make one feel. “These are the days when Birds come back” is a poem about summer. Emily observes nature as it prepares itself for fall. She considers summer the “Last Communion,” in that it is followed by the death that comes with fall. This poem is a brilliant expression of the scene Dickinson witnesses. She, along with readers, can behold nature in its true form, as quiet spectators. “Hurries a timid leaf” presents an image of a leaf rushing to live its final days to the fullest; as a human would. Her use of verbs in connection to otherwise inanimate objects is a perfect specimen of personification. Dickinson’s poem, “I never saw a Moor,” offers a different look at nature:
I never saw a Moor - -
I never saw the Sea - -
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be.
I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven - -
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given - -
This poem covers areas that people may not see, but take for granted; it is an argument for faith. One does not have to see a river to know that it exists or to enjoy it. This poem could also be describing things that Dickinson studied or read about in the Bible. In educating oneself, a person can travel across the world in his or her imagination. This idea can easily be transferred to nature and a person’s feelings and reactions when he or she sees a beautiful sight. In brief, Dickinson’s nature poems “delight with sharp, precise observations, but they are infused with mingled ecstasy and pain” (“Emily Dickinson 1169).
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Unlike Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost is almost exclusively known for his nature poetry. In addition, “Robert Frost occupies a unique position…[because] he has managed to win a wide popular audience while earning the almost universal acclaim of critics and scholars” (Lynen 1). Frost was born in California and lived there until he was eleven and his father died. He grew up in New England, a place with which he identified himself for the remainder of his life. After his move to England in 1912, Frost published his first book, A Boy’s Will, in 1913; he published his second book, North of Boston a year later and received much praise from critics. His almost constant work with outdoor scenery and his connection to New England caused Frost to be considered an “ideological descendant” of the transcendentalists (“Robert Frost” 1879). As said by Baym, “He is far less affirmative about the universe than they; for where they, looking at nature, discerned a benign creator, he saw ‘no expression, nothing to express’” (“Robert Frost” 1879).
Frost’s poetry depicts reality in his beautiful descriptions of nature. He accepted the limits of nature and believed, “Man can never find a home in nature, nor can he live outside of it” (Lynen 152). Lynen draws the following explanation of nature from the works of Robert Frost:
Nature evokes paradoxical attitudes; on the one hand it is a realm of ideals where the essential realities are found in their pristine forms; on the other it is an inferior plane where life is crude, insensate, mechanical. Most important, however, nature is separate, independent, off by itself away from man, just as the country north of Boston is separate from the urban environment of modern America. (153)
Keeping this in mind, one must read Frost’s poetry for “poetry’s sake,” as believed by the followers of the Aesthetic Movement of the late nineteenth century. Luckily, he offers enough beauty in his words alone for readers to enjoy his work without the need to connect it to some higher significance or emotion. In fact, his titles give explanation as to what the poem is about, so a person needn’t search for the meaning of the poem as he or she is reading. Although Frost believes nature should be seen as something completely separate from man, readers still transcend into another place through his poetry. Frost’s descriptions are elaborate enough that a person can see the images he describes.
One example of his intricate representations of natural settings is Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Little explanation is necessary because the poem simply describes a man’s journey home through the woods. Still, a reader can imagine the cold felt by the man and his horse and his dread of walking the rest of the way home in the snow. In its simplicity, however, the poem raises other questions. For example, one might wonder if the man stopped because he was tired and still had a long walk home or if he stopped simply to admire the snow (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 1891). Another example of a nature poem by Frost is “A Boundless Moment”:
He halted in the wind, and—what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.
‘Oh, that’s the Paradise-in-bloom,’ I said;
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
Had we but in us to assume in March
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.
We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on).
A young beech clinging to its last year’s leaves.
This poem provides readers with a beautiful image of nature, but according to Lynen:
This vision is merely an illusion—the flowers the two men thought they saw are only dead leaves clinging to a beech. The reader responds to the gorgeous sight of the “paradise-in-bloom,” in much the same way as the characters in the poem. But nature itself is barren…. The incident shows man’s tragic limitations…. The speaker’s refusal to accept anything but the truth, even when the truth is disappointing, demonstrates the courage of man’s intellect. (151).
In effect, this poem is the epitome of Frost’s view of the separation between man and nature. Frost’s thoughts on nature are very scientific, in that he believes man “can assert the reality of his spirit and thus can exist independently of the phsysical world in the act of looking squarely at the facts of nature” (Lynen 152).
E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)
E.E. Cummings is a popular modern poet who gained a reputation in the 1920s and 1930s for his “clever formal innovation, tender lyricism, and thematic celebration of individuals against mass society” (“E.E. Cummings” 2112). His first literary success, The Enormous Room, was published in 1922, and was an account of “his experience in a French prison camp during World War I” (2112). Cummings was born on October 14, 1894, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a father who was a Congregationalist minister and a teacher at Harvard. Cummings also attended Harvard and received his M.A. in 1916. In addition to his poetry, Cummings was also a painter, a playwright and a novelist. He published several collections of poetry in his lifetime and was very successful. “Known for typographic innovation, Cummings controlled both the look and the content of his poems” (“Unofficial”). According to Baym:
Cumming’s verse is characterized by common speech and attention to the visual form of the poem—that is, the poem as it appears on the page as distinguished from its sound when read aloud. Experiments with capitalization or lack of it, punctuation, line breaks, hyphenation, and verse shapes were all carried out for the reader’s eyes rather than ears. To express his sense that life was always in process, he wrote untitled poems without beginnings and endings, consisting of fragmentary lines. There is always humor in his poetry, and his outrage at cruelty and exploitation is balanced with gusto and celebration of the body. (“E.E. Cummings” 2113)
In addition to his style, Cummings also wrote about various topics, including nature.
Similar to the Romantic authors of the nineteenth century, Cummings reacted against “an increasingly technological Western society” by turning to nature and “celebrating the interanimation of man and nature” (Parekh par. 2-3). Cummings had a family farm, named Joy Farm, near Silver Lake, New Hampshire. It was here that he found peace and inspiration for his nature writing. The following poem exemplifies the idea that beauty and nature can aesthetically lift a person’s spirit:
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings; and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Not only does this poem speak to readers about the need to appreciate nature and what it has to offer, it also touches on spirituality and/or religion. Not only should one be able to see the beauty available to him or her, one should also be thankful for the Creator. In reaction to the way the beautiful day makes him feel, the narrator wonders how anyone could doubt the presence of a divine being who creates landscapes, skies, and feelings as works of art. In fact, the last two lines prove that the narrator has a higher understanding by the end of the poem; both the ears and the eyes are windows into the mind, and his windows are no longer draped. Similar to Frost, as Cummings makes the transition into nature writing, he is also often considered a descendent of the American Transcendentalist movement because of the higher understanding of nature and the human spirit provided in his poetry. This connection aside, like many of his readers, his nature poems were among his favorites.
Conclusion
Nature can easily be considered a universal bond between human beings, in that any person can, if they choose, experience it. This journal only provides a starting point for research into theories relating beauty and the environment and the way they are perceived by people. Literature seems to be a reliable canvas for nature, as seen through the works of Cooper, Emerson, Dickinson, Frost, and Cummings; however, other forms of art might also express the aesthetic effects of beauty. Further research may lead to the illustration of nature by Impressionist painters, such as Monet, or to various musicians and their works.
Works Cited
Baym, Nina (Ed.). “E.E. Cummings.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th shorter ed.). New York: Norton, 2003. 2112-2113.
- - -. “Emily Dickinson.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th shorter ed.). New York: Norton, 2003. 1167-1171.
- - -. “James Fenimore Cooper.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th shorter ed.). New York: Norton, 2003. 460-462.
- - -. “Ralph Waldo Emerson.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th shorter ed.). New York: Norton, 2003. 482-485.
- - -. “Robert Frost.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th shorter ed.). New York: Norton, 2003. 1878-1879.
Cooper, James Fenimore. Deerslayer. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.
Dickinson, Emily. “I never saw a Moor.” American Poems. 22 Nov. 2003. <http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson/1052.shtml>.
- - -. “I taste a liquor never brewed.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th shorter ed.). New York: Norton, 2003. 1172-1173.
- - -. “These are the days when Birds come back.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th shorter ed.). New York: Norton, 2003. 1172.
Edwards, Paul (Ed.). “Aesthetics.” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 1967.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th shorter ed.). (Ed.) Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003. 486-514.
Frost, Robert. “A Boundless Moment.” The Pastoral Art of Robert Frost. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960. 151.
- - -. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature (6th shorter ed.). New York: Norton, 2003. 1891.
Lacey, A.R. “Aesthetics.” A Dictionary of Philosophy. Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1976.
Little, Elizabeth Webb. “Thoreau and Dickinson: Nature’s Influence.” LITR 4232: American Renaissance Research Project. UHCL (2002). 20 Nov. 2003
<http://www.uhcl.edu/itc/course/LITR/4232/rp02little.htm>.
Lynen, John F. The Pastoral Art of Robert Frost. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960.
Miller, John. “Beauty: A Path to Ecstasy.” The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 18.1 (1995): 9-15.
Murfin, Ross & Supryia Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms (2nd ed.). New York: Bedford/St. Martin, 2003.
Parekh, Pushipa N. “Nature in the Poetry of E.E. Cummings.” Spelman College (1994). 19 Nov. 2003 <http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/issue3/Parekh3.htm>.
Peck, H. Daniel. A World by Itself: The Pastoral Moment in Cooper’s Fiction. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
Porte, Joel. “Introduction: Representing America – the Emerson Legacy.” The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Eds. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 1-12.
Richardson, Robert D. “Emerson and Nature.” The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Eds. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 97-105.
Robinson, David M. “Transcendentalism and Its Times.” The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Eds. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 13-29.
“Unit Nine Emily Dickinson: A Separate World.” History of American Literature. 1998. 19 Nov. 2003 <http://news1.yasuda-u.ac.jp/ptervin/HAL/hamlit09.html>.