American Romanticism
Student-led Text-Objective Discussion 2008

Thursday 30 October: Ralph Waldo Emerson, N 488-97, 520-25, 532-37 (introduction & opening sections of Nature, The American Scholar, & Self-Reliance).

text-objective discussion leader: Kristin Hamon 

Background

-Emerson was the son of a Unitarian minister and the second of five surviving boys.

- His skepticism toward Christianity was strengthened by his exposure to the German “higher criticism.”

-His wife, Ellen Tucker Emerson, died at the age of nineteen possibly contributing to his disillusionment with his position as a pastor. In 1832, he notified the church that he had become skeptical of a religion “overly committed to the past” and left his position.

-He went to Europe after leaving the church and was largely influenced by his relationship with Thomas Carlyle.

-His first book was Nature which was published anonymously at his own expense in 1836.

-With the publication of Essays in 1841, his lasting reputation began to take shape.

-He gave more than 1500 lectures over the course of his career.

-He supported antislavery and women’s rights.

-He is known for his poetic prose and brilliant metaphors.

Objectives for Review

Objective 1.1a – To identify and criticize ideas or attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism, the gothic, the sublime, the individual in nature or separate from the masses.

Objective 1.1c – To describe and evaluate leading literary genres of Romanticism: the essay (esp. for Transcendentalists – descended from the Puritan sermon?)

Objective 2.2b –European Romanticism begins near the time of the American Revolution, and Romanticism and the American nation develop ideas of individualism, sentimental nature, rebellion, and equality in parallel.

Objective 2.2e – American Romanticism exposes competing or complementary dimensions of the American identity: is America a culture or sensory and material gratification or moral, spiritual, idealistic mission?

Emerson – So vast! So expansive! – Your Reactions to the Text(s)

Review of Discussion Questions

1) Premise: Emerson and Jonathan Edwards were both New England pastors--Edwards for the late Puritan Congregationalists of the 1740s, Emerson for the Unitarian spinoff from Congregationalism in the late 1700s-early 1800s (from which Transcendentalism was another spinoff – Thank you, Dr. White!).

    Question: What comparisons in Emerson's style or content can be made to Jonathan Edwards? In other words, can you make a comparison between Emerson's writing and that of another pastor? What is gained or learned by such a comparison?

2) What effect does Emerson create by using an abundance of metaphors and hyperbolic diction? Does this choice uphold and further the intent of Romanticism or detract from it?

3) The sublime is a moment usually realized when an individual is isolated. Based on this week’s readings, do you think that Emerson is convinced that a communal sublime moment could be at all possible?

4) Forced to choose, do you see Emerson as living for the present or being more nostalgic, similar to other Romantic authors we have studied?

5) How does Emerson’s admiration of the individual support the Romantic precepts of rebellion and idealism?

Applying the Text(s)

1) Premise: Emerson and Jonathan Edwards were both New England pastors--Edwards for the late Puritan Congregationalists of the 1740s, Emerson for the Unitarian spinoff from Congregationalism in the late 1700s-early 1800s (from which Transcendentalism was another spinoff).

    Question: What comparisons in Emerson's style or content can be made to Jonathan Edwards? In other words, can you make a comparison between Emerson's writing and that of another pastor? What is gained or learned by such a comparison?

2) What effect does Emerson create by using an abundance of metaphors and hyperbolic diction? Does this choice uphold and further the intent of Romanticism or detract from it?

He displays his belief in the healing power of Nature. “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, --no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair (Nature 494).

Additional references to sustenance:

 “…thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man” (Nature 495).

“To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone” (Nature 496).

“Nature satisfies the soul” (Nature 496).

“Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness” (Nature 498).

“Standing on the bare ground, --my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, --all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me I am part or particle of God” (Nature 494).

 “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. His intercourse with heaven and earth, become part of his daily food” (Nature 494).

3) The sublime is a moment usually realized when an individual is isolated. Based on this week’s readings, do you think Emerson is convinced that a communal sublime moment could be at all possible?

Individual?

“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.” (Nature 493)

Emerson details “the perpetual presence of the sublime” by describing the stars that are taken for granted by men night after night (Nature 493).

He further describes the unusual and intoxicating aspects of nature. He confesses, “I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am…In the woods, is perpetual youth” (Nature 494).

He refers and praises the “private life of one man” existing as an “illustrious monarchy” (The American Scholar, N 529).

“The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man…Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesmen, and producers, and solider” (The American Scholar, N 520). How does Emerson reconcile the importance of the individual with the claim the plurality of the individual is what gives power?

Communal?

“To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, --that is genius” (Self-Reliance, N 533).

“The poet in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in ‘cities vast’ find true for them also…the deeper he dives into his privatest secretes presentiment, --to his wonder he finds, this is the most acceptable, most public, and universally true” (The American Scholar, N 528).

The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a wreath of love around all. A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men” (The American Scholar, N 532).

4) Forced to choose, do you see Emerson as living for the present or being more nostalgic, similar to other Romantic authors we have studied?

“Him the past instructs. Him the future invites” (The American Scholar, N 521).

“But genius always looks forward. The eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead” (The American Scholar, N 523).

“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, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books” (The American Scholar, N 523).

“The actions and events of our childhood and youth are now matters of calmest observation (The American Scholar, N 525).

Again he references isolation and remembering past times by referring to that moment as “his private observatory” (The American Scholar, N 527).

5) How does Emerson’s admiration of the individual support the Romantic precepts of rebellion and idealism?

“Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous political movement is, the new importance given to the single person” (The American Scholar, N 531).

He then refers again to America’s revolution exclaiming “We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe” (The American Scholar, N 532).

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind” (Self-Reliance, N 535).

“Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass?” (Self-Reliance, N 535).

“I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me” (Self-Reliance, N 535). *Note footnote here.

“Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars” (Self-Reliance, N 537).                   

“Insist on yourself. Never imitate” (Self-Reliance, N 547).

“Is not a man better than a town?” (Self-Reliance, N 549).

The End…for tonight…