Lecture 4 Ralph Waldo Emerson Yesterday— America’s Coming of Age

1. Describe the cultural liberation advocated by Emerson in essays such as "Nature."

Nature (1836) was Emerson's great breakthrough text, and with it he immediately acquired an audience of the best and the brightest.

Emerson announced essentially a new beginning for America; the political liberation was established, but the cultural one was yet to come.

The first order of business Emerson prescribed was a radical break from the past, an imperious need to create an indigenous American cultural agenda and manner.

Emerson, doubtless influenced by the great Romantic poets such as Wordsworth, envisioned a new relationship between man and nature. His most famous image of himself experiencing the wonder of nature is the "transparent eyeball," characterized by a complete erasure of the lines separating self and environment.

Emerson especially articulated the need for a new language, an idiom that would be commensurate with the revolutionary tidings he had in mind. In this regard, Emerson's theories proved quite influential for subsequent writers.

2. Summarize Emerson's notion of the universal man.

Emerson's concept of language is a mix of cultural and linguistic notions.

Nature itself is seen in semiotic terms, in that all things are understood as signs for other things; hence, "words are signs of natural facts" and "nature is the symbol of spirit."

Emerson's material linguistics have real implications for the writer because they mandate a search for "original language," for the word that most closely describes the thing.

The project is strategic: the "right" writing allows you to tap into power, to recover the indwelling force that is linked to words.

This noble view of utterance issues a challenge of the writer: to describe reality by "opening it up," to "speak" the riddle of the sphinx.

Emerson's view of writing is expressed as a challenge for America: to open up "facts" of our indigenous new landscape and way of life and to liberate the magic and promise of America by capturing its essence and strength in the right language.

3. Explain Emerson's opinion of scholarship.

Emerson's famous speech at Harvard, "The American Scholar" (1837), is seen as a wake-up call to the country's young intellectuals.

American achievements in the political arena have not been matched intellectually or culturally, Emerson contended. It's time for America to measure up.

We must apprehend "Universal Man," Emerson argues, by which he means that divisions of labor and specialization blind us. In this sense, he offers a preview of Karl Marx.

We must go beyond scholarship as well, because the university's slavish and passive attitude can never produce a creative energy of its own.

We must fashion an indigenous American language, to be found in our countryside and among our simple people, close to the earth and nature.

In a remarkable passage, Emerson takes on the "subjectivism" of his time and claims that we must go beyond introspection, beyond self-searching, and enter the world of facts and deeds.

The Poet" (1846) is Emerson's chief statement about the literary agenda of the future.

Poetry is our commonwealth, Emerson claims, by which he means literally that it enriches all of us and makes us wealthy as a nation.

America is the great new poetic subject. The writer is to make us see what is timeless and enduring in our moment, just as Homer and Shakespeare did in their moments.

We need a vehicular language, Emerson said, so that the poet may move his audience, and bring them into his vision of America. For this purpose, the old locutions of the past would not do.

In a famous paragraph, Emerson called for the poet of the future, outlined the poet's duties, and virtually predefined what happened in 1855 when Whitman published Leaves of Grass.