EMERSON'S PR/POET NCE PA

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Morris, Saundra; Porte, Joel

• ISBN13: 9780393967920
• ISBN10: 0393967921
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-03-21
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

This new volume is the most comprehensive collection of Emerson's writings available in a paperback edition. The selections include Emerson's major sermons, lectures, essays, addresses, and poems, as well as excerpts from his journals, notebooks, and correspondence. "Contexts" addresses the topics of American Transcendentalism, philosophy, and Emerson's contemporary reception. "Criticism" includes thirteen twentieth-century essays by O. W. Firkins, Stephen E. Whicher, Perry Miller, Joel Porte, Hyatt H. Waggoner, Julie Ellison, Michael T. Gilmore, Barbara Packer, Stanley Cavell, Cornel West, Len Gougeon, Richard Poirier, and Saundra Morris. A Chronology, Selected Bibliography, and Index are included.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
A Note on the Texts	xiv
Abbreviations	xvi
The Texts of Emerson's Prose and Poetry
Sermons
[Pray Without Ceasing], 1 Thessalonians 5:17, July 25, 1826	3	(6)
[Summer], Psalms 74:16--17, June 13, 1829	9	(4)
[Trust Yourself], Matthew 16:26, October 3, 1830	13	(4)
[The Lord's Supper], Romans 14:17, September 9, 1832	17	(10)
Nature	27	(457)
Selected Early Addresses and Lectures
The American Scholar	56	(13)
An Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, July 15, 1838	69	(12)
The Method of Nature	81	(12)
The Transcendentalist	93	(12)
From Essays: First Series
History	105	(15)
Self-Reliance	120	(17)
Compensation	137	(13)
Spiritual Laws	150	(13)
The Over-Soul	163	(11)
Circles	174	(9)
From Essays: Second Series
The Poet	183	(15)
Experience	198	(15)
Politics	213	(8)
New England Reformers	221	(13)
From Representative Men
Montaigne, or the Skeptic	234	(13)
Shakspeare, or the Poet	247	(14)
From The Conduct of Life
Fate	261	(18)
Power	279	(10)
Illusions	289	(8)
From Letters and Social Aims
From Poetry and Imagination	297	(22)
Quotation and Originality	319	(12)
From The Dial
The Editors to the Reader	331	(2)
Thoughts on Modern Literature	333	(15)
Miscellanies on His Contemporaries and His Times
From An Address...on...the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies	348	(11)
Address to the Citizens of Concord on the Fugitive Slave Law	359	(13)
From Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli	372	(26)
Thoreau	398	(13)
Abraham Lincoln	411	(4)
From Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England	415	(14)
Selected Poetry
From Poems	429	(34)
The Sphinx	429	(3)
Each and All	432	(1)
The Problem	433	(2)
The Visit	435	(1)
Uriel	436	(2)
Hamatreya	438	(1)
The Rhodora	439	(1)
The Humble-Bee	440	(2)
The Snow-Storm	442	(1)
Fable	443	(1)
Ode, Inscribed to W. H. Channing	443	(3)
Give All to Love	446	(1)
Thine Eyes Still Shined	447	(1)
Eros	447	(1)
The Apology	448	(1)
Merlin, I	448	(2)
Merlin, II	450	(2)
Bacchus	452	(2)
Blight	454	(1)
Threnody	455	(7)
Concord Hymn	462	(1)
From May-Day and Other Pieces	463	(16)
From May-Day	463	(1)
Brahma	464	(1)
Nemesis	465	(1)
Boston Hymn	465	(3)
Voluntaries	468	(3)
Days	471	(1)
The Chartist's Complaint	472	(1)
The Titmouse	472	(3)
Sea-Shore	475	(1)
Two Rivers	476	(1)
Waldeinsamkeit	477	(1)
Terminus	478	(1)
From Elements	479	(2)
Art	479	(1)
Worship	480	(1)
From Quatrains	481	(1)
Memory	481	(1)
From Translations	481	(1)
Song of Seid Nimetollah of Kuhistan	481	(1)
Others	482	(2)
Grace	482	(1)
Cupido	483	(1)
[``Let Me Go Where E'er I Will'']	483	(1)
[``Ever the Rock of Ages Melts'']	483	(1)
From Journals and Notebooks	484	(307)
From Correspondence
To William Emerson, Concord, November 10, 1814	531	(3)
To Mary Moody Emerson, Cambridge, September 23, 1826	534	(1)
To William Emerson, Charleston, January 6 and 9, 1827	534	(1)
To Mary Moody Emerson, St. Augustine, March 15? 1827	534	(1)
To the Second Church and Society in Boston, Cambridge, January 30, 1829	535	(1)
To the Proprietors of the Second Church, Boston, September 11, 1832	536	(1)
To the Second Church and Society, Boston, December 22, 1832	536	(2)
To Edward Bliss Emerson, Boston, December 22, 1833	538	(1)
To Edward Bliss Emerson, Newton, May 31, 1834	539	(1)
To Lydia Jackson, Concord, January 24, 1835	540	(1)
To Lydia Jackson, Concord, February 1, 1835	540	(1)
To Thomas Carlyle, Concord, September 17, 1836	541	(1)
To William Emerson, Concord, October 31, 1836	541	(1)
To Martin Van Buren, Concord, April 23, 1838	542	(2)
For Henry David Thoreau, Concord, May 2, 1838	544	(1)
To Thomas Carlyle, Concord, May 10, 1838	545	(1)
To Amos Bronson Alcott, Concord, June 28, 1838	545	(1)
To Henry Ware Jr., Concord, July 28, 1838	546	(1)
To Henry Ware Jr., Concord, October 8, 1838	547	(1)
To Thomas Carlyle, Concord, October 17, 1838	548	(1)
To James Freeman Clarke, Concord, December 7, 1838	548	(1)
To Margaret Fuller, Concord, August 4, 1840	549	(1)
To Margaret Fuller, Concord, October 24, 1840	549	(1)
To Margaret Fuller, Concord, March 14, 1841	550	(1)
To Mary Moody Emerson, Concord, September 21, 1841	551	(1)
To Mary Moody Emerson, Concord, January 28, 1842	551	(1)
To Margaret Fuller, Concord, January 28, 1842	552	(1)
To Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Concord, January 28, 1842	552	(1)
To Caroline Sturgis, Concord, February 4, 1842	552	(1)
To Lidian Emerson, Providence, February 10, 1842	553	(1)
To Lidian Emerson, Castleton, Staten Island, March 1, 1842	553	(1)
To Margaret Fuller, Concord, June 7, 1843	554	(1)
To Charles Anderson Dana, Concord, October 18, 1843	554	(1)
To Margaret Fuller, Concord, December 17, 1843	555	(1)
To Christopher Pearse Cranch, Concord, June 7, 1844	555	(1)
To Thomas Carlyle, Concord, December 31, 1844	556	(1)
To William J. Rotch, Concord, November 17, 1845	557	(1)
To the Corporation of Harvard University, Concord, June 25, 1846	557	(1)
To William Henry Furness, Concord, August 6, 1847	558	(1)
To Henry David Thoreau, Manchester, December 2, 1847	559	(1)
To Lidian Emerson, London, March 8 and 10, 1848	559	(1)
To William Emerson, Concord, February 10, 1850	560	(1)
To Paulina W. Davis, Concord, September 18, 1850	561	(1)
To Wendell Phillips, Concord, February 19, 1853	561	(1)
To Caroline Sturgis Tappan, Concord, July 22, 1853	562	(1)
To Walt Whitman, Concord, July 21, 1855	563	(1)
To Thomas Carlyle, Concord, May 6, 1856	563	(1)
To Henry David Thoreau, Concord, May 11, 1858	564	(1)
To William Henry Seward, Buffalo, January 12, 1863	564	(1)
To Emma Lazarus, Concord, February 24, 1868	565	(1)
To Emma Lazarus, Concord, April 14, 1868	565	(1)
To Emma Lazarus, Concord, July 9, 1869	566	(1)
To Emma Lazarus, Concord, August 23, 1869	567	(1)
To Emma Lazarus, Concord, August 19, 1870	567	(1)
To Lidian Emerson, the Wyoming, October 31 and November 2, 1872	568	(1)
To Emma Lazarus, Concord, July 22, 1876	568	(1)
To George Stewart Jr., Concord, January 22, 1877	569	(4)
Contexts
Transcendentalism
From On Germany	573	(2)
Madame de Stael
Prospectus to The Recluse	575	(2)
William Wordsworth
From Coleridge's Literary Character	577	(3)
Frederic Henry Hedge
Genius	580	(4)
Sampson Reed
Reviews and Impressions
Caricatures	584	(2)
Christopher Pearse Cranch
Ballad of the Abolition Blunder-buss	586	(2)
L. M. Sargent
Anonymous An Illustrated Criticism	588	(2)
From Nature---A Prose Poem	590	(7)
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
The New School in Literature and Religion	597	(2)
Andrews Norton
Anonymous [Emerson's Essays]	599	(2)
Mr. Emerson's Lecture	601	(1)
Walter Whitman
Emerson's Essays	602	(4)
Margaret Fuller
From The Old Manse	606	(1)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
From A Fable for Critics	607	(2)
James Russell Lowell
From A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers	609	(1)
Henry David Thoreau
From North America	610	(2)
Anthony Trollope
From Journals	612	(2)
Louisa May Alcott
To R. W. E.	614	(1)
Emma Lazarus
Emerson	615	(13)
Henry James
From Emerson	628	(5)
Jose Marti
Emerson	633	(6)
George Santayana
Address at the Emerson Centenary in Concord	639	(4)
William James
Ralph Waldo Emerson	643	(5)
John Dewey
From Model Americans	648	(2)
D. H. Lawrence
On Emerson	650	(4)
Robert Frost
Emerson	654	(3)
A. R. Ammons
Criticism
Has Emerson a Future?	657	(6)
O. W. Firkins
Emerson's Tragic Sense	663	(5)
Stephen E. Whicher
New England's Transcendentalism: Native or Imported?	668	(11)
Perry Miller
The Problem of Emerson	679	(18)
Joel Porte
From The Achievement of the Poems: ``Artful Thunder''	697	(7)
Hyatt H. Waggoner
``Quotation and Originality''	704	(8)
Julie Ellison
Emerson and the Persistence of the Commodity	712	(13)
Michael T. Gilmore
Ralph Waldo Emerson	725	(13)
Barbara Packer
From The Philosopher in American Life	738	(4)
Stanley Cavell
From The Emersonian Prehistory of American Pragmatism	742	(16)
Cornel West
From Virtue's Hero	758	(9)
Len Gougeon
From Poetry and Pragmatism	767	(4)
Richard Poirier
The Heart Has Its Jubilees	771	(6)
Robert D. Richardson Jr.
Through a Thousand Voices: Emerson's Poetry and ``The Sphinx''	777	(14)
Saundra Morris
A Chronology	791	(3)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Selected Bibliography	794	(5)
Index of Titles and First Lines of Poems	799