The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson

by Edited by Joel Porte , Saundra Morris

• ISBN13: 9780521496117
• ISBN10: 052149611X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-04-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson provides a critical introduction to pastor and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, author of Nature and The Conduct of Life. The tradition of American literature and philosophy as we know it at the end of the twentieth century was largely shaped by Emerson's example and practice. This volume offers students, scholars, and the general reader a collection of fresh interpretations of Emerson's writing, milieu, influence, and cultural significance. All essays are newly commissioned for this volume, written at an accessible yet challenging level, and augmented by a comprehensive chronology and bibliography.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	ix
List of Abbreviations	xii
Preface	xiii
Chronology of Emerson's Life	xvi
Introduction: Representing America - the Emerson Legacy	1	(12)
Joel Porte
Transcendentalism and Its Times	13	(17)
David M. Robinson
Ralph Waldo Emerson in His Family	30	(19)
Phyllis Cole
The Radical Emerson?	49	(27)
Robert Milder
Emerson as Lecturer: Man Thinking, Man Saying	76	(21)
R. Jakson Wilson
Emerson and Nature	97	(9)
Robert D. Richardson, JR.
Essays: First Series (1841)	106	(15)
Albert J. Von Frank
Transcendental Friendship: Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau	121	(19)
Jeffrey Steele
Tears for Emerson: Essays, Second Series	140	(22)
Julie Ellison
``The Remembering Wine'': Emerson's Influence on Whitman and Dickinson	162	(30)
Catherine Tufariello
Post-Colonial Emerson and the Erasure of Europe	192	(26)
Robert Weisbuch
``Metre-Making'' Arguments: Emerson's Poems	218	(25)
Saundra Morris
The Conduct of Life: Emerson's Anatomy of Power	243	(24)
Michael Lopez
Selected Bibliography	267	(8)
Index	275