Emerson delivered "The American Scholar" as a speech to Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1837, calling for Americans to seek their creative inspirations using America as their source rather than relying on European traditions. The essay discusses how nature, books, and action educate the scholar and outlines the scholar's duties to develop self-trust, preserve past wisdom, and communicate noble thoughts to the public independently, despite popularity or dissent. Emerson concludes by applauding the romantic poets who found inspiration in common people and contends that the independent, original American scholar will create a native American culture.
This document summarizes T.S. Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". The essay is divided into three parts: Eliot's concept of tradition, his theory of the impersonality of poetry, and a conclusion. Eliot argues that a poet must be steeped in tradition through painstaking study in order to create new works of art. A poet surrenders their personality and emotions to tradition, acting as a medium for their fusion. Their work is then judged based on how it compares and contributes to the ongoing tradition, rather than as an expression of personal feelings or experiences.
The document discusses the use of symbolism in T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land". It analyzes various symbols in the poem including water, the Fisher King, religion, animals, drought, characters, cities, rivers, Buddhism, seasons, thunder, and landscape. Key symbols examined are water and its association with cleansing and relief as well as drought; the Fisher King and its connection to fertility rites and Christianity; and how cities represent the cyclical rise and fall of cultures. The document serves to explore the symbolic meanings and interpretations behind elements in Eliot's modernist work.
Tragic Plot-Its constituent parts, Importance of plot, Poet as a maker of plot not story, The construction of plot, the magnitude of plot, organic unity of plot, Fatal and fortunate plots, peripety and anagnorisis, complication and denouement, Freytag pyramid, Aristortle's concern, Dramatic unities
Samuel Johnson wrote a preface to Shakespeare analyzing his works. He praised Shakespeare's ability to create universally understood characters despite differences in place and time. However, he also acknowledged Shakespeare's faults, such as neglecting moral lessons, weak plots, and stretching out stories too long. While Shakespeare disregarded the classical unities of time and place in drama, Johnson argued the unity of action was most important, and praised how Shakespeare's plots followed from consistent characters and affecting incidents.
This document summarizes Aristotle's six elements of tragedy: plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle. It explains that plot is the most important element and soul of tragedy, involving events arranged in a complex manner. It describes Aristotle's views on each element and how they contribute to an effective tragedy, such as realistic characters and appropriate language. The document concludes that Aristotle's theory provides a framework for analyzing fine art.
This document provides an overview of Matthew Arnold's philosophical work "Culture and Anarchy". It discusses how Arnold defines culture as the internal pursuit of social and moral perfection. He categorizes English society into Barbarians, Philistines, and the Populace. Arnold believes culture and anarchy are different, with culture representing an ongoing process of cultivation, while anarchy means a society without government. The document also examines Arnold's views on Hellenism and Hebraism, and how they relate to different approaches to knowledge, faith, and conduct.
This document summarizes T.S. Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". The essay is divided into three parts: Eliot's concept of tradition, his theory of the impersonality of poetry, and a conclusion. Eliot argues that a poet must be steeped in tradition through painstaking study in order to create new works of art. A poet surrenders their personality and emotions to tradition, acting as a medium for their fusion. Their work is then judged based on how it compares and contributes to the ongoing tradition, rather than as an expression of personal feelings or experiences.
The document discusses the use of symbolism in T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land". It analyzes various symbols in the poem including water, the Fisher King, religion, animals, drought, characters, cities, rivers, Buddhism, seasons, thunder, and landscape. Key symbols examined are water and its association with cleansing and relief as well as drought; the Fisher King and its connection to fertility rites and Christianity; and how cities represent the cyclical rise and fall of cultures. The document serves to explore the symbolic meanings and interpretations behind elements in Eliot's modernist work.
Tragic Plot-Its constituent parts, Importance of plot, Poet as a maker of plot not story, The construction of plot, the magnitude of plot, organic unity of plot, Fatal and fortunate plots, peripety and anagnorisis, complication and denouement, Freytag pyramid, Aristortle's concern, Dramatic unities
Samuel Johnson wrote a preface to Shakespeare analyzing his works. He praised Shakespeare's ability to create universally understood characters despite differences in place and time. However, he also acknowledged Shakespeare's faults, such as neglecting moral lessons, weak plots, and stretching out stories too long. While Shakespeare disregarded the classical unities of time and place in drama, Johnson argued the unity of action was most important, and praised how Shakespeare's plots followed from consistent characters and affecting incidents.
This document summarizes Aristotle's six elements of tragedy: plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle. It explains that plot is the most important element and soul of tragedy, involving events arranged in a complex manner. It describes Aristotle's views on each element and how they contribute to an effective tragedy, such as realistic characters and appropriate language. The document concludes that Aristotle's theory provides a framework for analyzing fine art.
This document provides an overview of Matthew Arnold's philosophical work "Culture and Anarchy". It discusses how Arnold defines culture as the internal pursuit of social and moral perfection. He categorizes English society into Barbarians, Philistines, and the Populace. Arnold believes culture and anarchy are different, with culture representing an ongoing process of cultivation, while anarchy means a society without government. The document also examines Arnold's views on Hellenism and Hebraism, and how they relate to different approaches to knowledge, faith, and conduct.
Themes of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManFatima Gul
The document discusses several major themes in James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. These include Stephen's rejection of authority and struggle for independence, his development as an artist, his pride and egotism, sin as a liberating force, life as a maze of confusion, his search for identity, dissatisfaction with his surroundings, the role of language and communication, criticism of religion and spirituality, the instability of home, and the centrality of literature and writing to Stephen's life and journey.
This document summarizes William Wordsworth's preface to Lyrical Ballads published in 1800. It provides background on Wordsworth and his collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The preface laid out Wordsworth's theory that poetry should be written using ordinary language to describe common sights and sounds and everyday experiences to arouse feelings of tranquility and pleasure in the reader. Wordsworth believed poetry originated from emotions recollected later and the poet acts as an interpreter of those feelings and nature for readers. The document outlines some of Wordsworth's most famous poems and ideas around the role of imagination and poetry's relationship to nature from the preface.
The chorus in Greek tragedies served several functions: commenting on and reacting to the plot, establishing ethical frameworks, adding spectacle through song and dance, and pacing the action. In Oedipus Rex specifically, the chorus represents the citizens of Thebes and gradually comes to understand and pity Oedipus's fate over the course of the play through their odes, guiding the audience's emotions and response. They dramatize the unfolding of events and their own enlightenment.
Sidney's 'Apology for Poetry' defends poetry on two grounds: that it is of divine origin and provides social utility. Sidney argues that poetry was one of the earliest forms of education and was used in the Bible to praise God. He asserts that poetry can both teach and delight audiences by providing examples of virtue and vice. While some accuse poetry of being unprofitable or misleading, Sidney claims poetry aims to inspire moral elevation, not sin. He also notes that Plato himself drew on poetry and only banned certain poets, not poetry itself.
Matthew Arnold viewed poetry as the "criticism of life" that is governed by poetic truth and beauty. He believed the best poetry has seriousness of substance combined with superior style and diction. Arnold analyzed poets using his "touchstone method" of comparison and advocated for disinterested criticism. However, critics argue he did not always practice disinterested criticism and overemphasized morality. Overall, Arnold made significant contributions to literary criticism through his analysis of poets and emphasis on poetry's relationship to interpreting life.
Stream of Consciousness in Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse'Dilip Barad
This presentation is about the narrative technique used by Modernist female novelist Virginia Woolf in her novel 'To The Lighthouse'. It deals with illustrations from the novel and its explanations. The interior monologue, free association etc are explained in this presentation.
The document discusses the role and importance of the reader in Henry Fielding's novels Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. It explains that Fielding viewed the reader as an active participant in constructing the meaning of the novel, rather than a passive receiver. He used techniques like contrast, ambiguity, and direct addresses to the reader to encourage participation and independent thinking. The document also analyzes how Fielding provided guidance to readers through author-reader dialogue, while still allowing complexity and open-ended interpretations.
This document provides information about T.S. Eliot's essay "Tradition and Individual Talent". It discusses that the essay was first published in 1919 and later included in Eliot's 1920 collection The Sacred Wood. The essay is divided into three parts that discuss Eliot's concepts of tradition, the theory of depersonalization in poetry, and his conclusion that poetry is an escape from emotion and personality rather than an expression of it. It also notes that Eliot believes a poet can understand what to do if they have a sense of literary tradition and history.
Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry is a seminal work of Renaissance literary theory that defends the value and importance of poetry. Sidney argues that poetry is superior to other fields like philosophy and history in its ability to teach virtue and move people to moral action. He addresses common criticisms of poetry, such as that it is frivolous or promotes vice, and counters that poetry holds a long tradition of being valued for its ability to inspire. While some poetry in England at the time was of poor quality, Sidney believes the English language is well-suited to poetry and hopes for future poets to realize its full potential.
' Waiting For Godot- As an Absurd Theatre 'kishan8282
This document is a student paper analyzing Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot" as an example of absurdist or "Theatre of the Absurd" drama. It defines key features of absurdist plays like meaningless plots, lack of beginning/end, repetitive dialogue. It analyzes how Godot fits these through its plotless story of Vladimir and Estragon waiting endlessly. The paper also discusses the philosophical roots of absurdism in Camus' view of life as meaningless and examines elements like nonsense language, stereotypical characters, and absurd/ambiguous endings found in Godot and characteristic of Theatre of the Absurd.
The concept of imagination in biographia literariaDayamani Surya
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria discusses his concepts of imagination and fancy. He divides the mind into two faculties: primary imagination, which is a creative power that mimics the divine principle of creation; and secondary imagination, which relies on the will to recreate primary imagination. Coleridge coined the term "esemplastic" to describe imagination's ability to shape multiple ideas into a unified whole. In contrast, fancy is a mechanical, passive faculty that accumulates facts but cannot create anything new. Coleridge viewed imagination as the primary creative force in writing.
Traditional and individual talent theoryAqsaSuleman1
T.S. Eliot's essay argues that individual talent and creativity are shaped by tradition. He rejects the Romantic view that poetry expresses the poet's personality or emotions. Instead, Eliot believes the poet must develop a sense of literary history to understand how their work relates to the past. The essay also introduces Eliot's theory of "impersonal" poetry - that successful works escape the poet's personality and emotions and instead channel ordinary feelings into an artistic combination.
1. The document provides biographies of two Pakistani writers - Muneeza Shamsie and Tariq Rehman. It discusses their lives, careers, and contributions to Pakistani literature.
2. Muneeza Shamsie is a literary historian, editor, and journalist who has compiled several influential anthologies of Pakistani English literature. She has also written on the development of Pakistani English literature.
3. Tariq Rehman is a renowned Pakistani academic and writer who has produced significant research on Pakistani linguistics and literature. He has authored short story collections and books on sociolinguistics with a focus on Pakistan.
Ezra Pound was an American poet and writer born in Idaho in 1885 who had a significant influence on modernist poetry in the early 20th century. He helped promote the works of T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway. Pound spent time in London and Paris where he further developed his poetry and worked on his masterwork The Cantos, a long complex poem spanning his life. In the 1940s, Pound made anti-Semitic radio broadcasts for Mussolini and was arrested for treason after World War 2, spending over a decade in St. Elizabeths Hospital. He continued writing and revising The Cantos until his death in 1972 in Venice, Italy.
This document provides information about Victorian literature and the poet Robert Browning. It summarizes Browning's life, influences, styles of poetry including dramatic monologues, and analyzes some of his most famous poems like "My Last Duchess" and "Porpheyria's Lover." The document also discusses key characteristics of Victorian literature such as its emphasis on order, morality, and influence of science.
The document provides an analysis of John Keats' poem "Ode to a Grecian Urn". It includes the author's name, topic, and department submitted to. It then discusses some key aspects of the poem, including how Keats refers to the urn as an "unravish'd bride of quietness" and "foster-child of silence and slow time". It also explains how Keats sees the urn as a "sylvan historian" that tells a story through its images. One of the main themes Keats conveys is that "Beauty is a Truth and Truth is a Beauty".
Samuel Johnson wrote the preface to Shakespeare's plays in which he analyzed Shakespeare's style and characters. Johnson acknowledged Shakespeare's genius but also discussed three main faults: immoral plots, disregarding time and place unities, and loose plots. Johnson argued that critics should judge works based on their merits rather than following outdated conventions. He believed Shakespeare followed the unity of action but intentionally disregarded the unities of time and place, which was acceptable for history plays depicting events over long periods. Overall, Johnson provided a balanced analysis of Shakespeare's strengths and weaknesses through a classic critical lens.
John Keats was a key figure of the second generation of English Romantic poets. He lived from 1795 to 1821. Keats' poetry is characterized by sensual imagery and a focus on themes of beauty, love, nature, and fancy. As a Romantic poet, Keats emphasized appreciation of life, love, and beauty despite his own depression and impending death. He was heavily influenced by ancient Greek and Roman texts as well as Shakespeare, and focused on themes of death, sorrow, love, and nature that were common to Romanticism. Some of Keats' most famous works include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale."
This document summarizes Ngugi wa Thiong'o's commentary on abolishing the English department at the University of Nairobi. It discusses suggestions to establish a Department of African Literature and Culture instead that places Africa at the center. The current English department framework assumes the centrality of English literature and views other cultures as satellites. However, Ngugi argues for orienting education towards placing Kenya, East Africa, and Africa at the center to understand ourselves, with other cultures considered in relation to understanding Africa better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803 in Massachusetts to a long line of ministers. He was a key figure in establishing transcendentalism and published the influential book Nature in 1836, which outlined many ideas of the movement. Emerson had a successful career as a lecturer, publishing several essays. He had four children with his wife Lydia but also experienced the early deaths of family members. Emerson became a famous and influential writer and thinker in 19th century America before dying of pneumonia in 1882 in Concord, Massachusetts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an influential American essayist and poet in the 19th century who led the Transcendentalist movement. He published influential essays and gave over 1,500 lectures promoting ideas of individualism and criticism of social pressures. Some of his most famous works include Nature, The American Scholar, and essays in his First and Second Series collections. Emerson developed ideas around individuality, freedom, and the relationship between the soul and nature. Though his writing was complex, Emerson had a profound influence on American thinkers and remains an important figure in American intellectual history.
Themes of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManFatima Gul
The document discusses several major themes in James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. These include Stephen's rejection of authority and struggle for independence, his development as an artist, his pride and egotism, sin as a liberating force, life as a maze of confusion, his search for identity, dissatisfaction with his surroundings, the role of language and communication, criticism of religion and spirituality, the instability of home, and the centrality of literature and writing to Stephen's life and journey.
This document summarizes William Wordsworth's preface to Lyrical Ballads published in 1800. It provides background on Wordsworth and his collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The preface laid out Wordsworth's theory that poetry should be written using ordinary language to describe common sights and sounds and everyday experiences to arouse feelings of tranquility and pleasure in the reader. Wordsworth believed poetry originated from emotions recollected later and the poet acts as an interpreter of those feelings and nature for readers. The document outlines some of Wordsworth's most famous poems and ideas around the role of imagination and poetry's relationship to nature from the preface.
The chorus in Greek tragedies served several functions: commenting on and reacting to the plot, establishing ethical frameworks, adding spectacle through song and dance, and pacing the action. In Oedipus Rex specifically, the chorus represents the citizens of Thebes and gradually comes to understand and pity Oedipus's fate over the course of the play through their odes, guiding the audience's emotions and response. They dramatize the unfolding of events and their own enlightenment.
Sidney's 'Apology for Poetry' defends poetry on two grounds: that it is of divine origin and provides social utility. Sidney argues that poetry was one of the earliest forms of education and was used in the Bible to praise God. He asserts that poetry can both teach and delight audiences by providing examples of virtue and vice. While some accuse poetry of being unprofitable or misleading, Sidney claims poetry aims to inspire moral elevation, not sin. He also notes that Plato himself drew on poetry and only banned certain poets, not poetry itself.
Matthew Arnold viewed poetry as the "criticism of life" that is governed by poetic truth and beauty. He believed the best poetry has seriousness of substance combined with superior style and diction. Arnold analyzed poets using his "touchstone method" of comparison and advocated for disinterested criticism. However, critics argue he did not always practice disinterested criticism and overemphasized morality. Overall, Arnold made significant contributions to literary criticism through his analysis of poets and emphasis on poetry's relationship to interpreting life.
Stream of Consciousness in Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse'Dilip Barad
This presentation is about the narrative technique used by Modernist female novelist Virginia Woolf in her novel 'To The Lighthouse'. It deals with illustrations from the novel and its explanations. The interior monologue, free association etc are explained in this presentation.
The document discusses the role and importance of the reader in Henry Fielding's novels Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. It explains that Fielding viewed the reader as an active participant in constructing the meaning of the novel, rather than a passive receiver. He used techniques like contrast, ambiguity, and direct addresses to the reader to encourage participation and independent thinking. The document also analyzes how Fielding provided guidance to readers through author-reader dialogue, while still allowing complexity and open-ended interpretations.
This document provides information about T.S. Eliot's essay "Tradition and Individual Talent". It discusses that the essay was first published in 1919 and later included in Eliot's 1920 collection The Sacred Wood. The essay is divided into three parts that discuss Eliot's concepts of tradition, the theory of depersonalization in poetry, and his conclusion that poetry is an escape from emotion and personality rather than an expression of it. It also notes that Eliot believes a poet can understand what to do if they have a sense of literary tradition and history.
Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry is a seminal work of Renaissance literary theory that defends the value and importance of poetry. Sidney argues that poetry is superior to other fields like philosophy and history in its ability to teach virtue and move people to moral action. He addresses common criticisms of poetry, such as that it is frivolous or promotes vice, and counters that poetry holds a long tradition of being valued for its ability to inspire. While some poetry in England at the time was of poor quality, Sidney believes the English language is well-suited to poetry and hopes for future poets to realize its full potential.
' Waiting For Godot- As an Absurd Theatre 'kishan8282
This document is a student paper analyzing Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot" as an example of absurdist or "Theatre of the Absurd" drama. It defines key features of absurdist plays like meaningless plots, lack of beginning/end, repetitive dialogue. It analyzes how Godot fits these through its plotless story of Vladimir and Estragon waiting endlessly. The paper also discusses the philosophical roots of absurdism in Camus' view of life as meaningless and examines elements like nonsense language, stereotypical characters, and absurd/ambiguous endings found in Godot and characteristic of Theatre of the Absurd.
The concept of imagination in biographia literariaDayamani Surya
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria discusses his concepts of imagination and fancy. He divides the mind into two faculties: primary imagination, which is a creative power that mimics the divine principle of creation; and secondary imagination, which relies on the will to recreate primary imagination. Coleridge coined the term "esemplastic" to describe imagination's ability to shape multiple ideas into a unified whole. In contrast, fancy is a mechanical, passive faculty that accumulates facts but cannot create anything new. Coleridge viewed imagination as the primary creative force in writing.
Traditional and individual talent theoryAqsaSuleman1
T.S. Eliot's essay argues that individual talent and creativity are shaped by tradition. He rejects the Romantic view that poetry expresses the poet's personality or emotions. Instead, Eliot believes the poet must develop a sense of literary history to understand how their work relates to the past. The essay also introduces Eliot's theory of "impersonal" poetry - that successful works escape the poet's personality and emotions and instead channel ordinary feelings into an artistic combination.
1. The document provides biographies of two Pakistani writers - Muneeza Shamsie and Tariq Rehman. It discusses their lives, careers, and contributions to Pakistani literature.
2. Muneeza Shamsie is a literary historian, editor, and journalist who has compiled several influential anthologies of Pakistani English literature. She has also written on the development of Pakistani English literature.
3. Tariq Rehman is a renowned Pakistani academic and writer who has produced significant research on Pakistani linguistics and literature. He has authored short story collections and books on sociolinguistics with a focus on Pakistan.
Ezra Pound was an American poet and writer born in Idaho in 1885 who had a significant influence on modernist poetry in the early 20th century. He helped promote the works of T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway. Pound spent time in London and Paris where he further developed his poetry and worked on his masterwork The Cantos, a long complex poem spanning his life. In the 1940s, Pound made anti-Semitic radio broadcasts for Mussolini and was arrested for treason after World War 2, spending over a decade in St. Elizabeths Hospital. He continued writing and revising The Cantos until his death in 1972 in Venice, Italy.
This document provides information about Victorian literature and the poet Robert Browning. It summarizes Browning's life, influences, styles of poetry including dramatic monologues, and analyzes some of his most famous poems like "My Last Duchess" and "Porpheyria's Lover." The document also discusses key characteristics of Victorian literature such as its emphasis on order, morality, and influence of science.
The document provides an analysis of John Keats' poem "Ode to a Grecian Urn". It includes the author's name, topic, and department submitted to. It then discusses some key aspects of the poem, including how Keats refers to the urn as an "unravish'd bride of quietness" and "foster-child of silence and slow time". It also explains how Keats sees the urn as a "sylvan historian" that tells a story through its images. One of the main themes Keats conveys is that "Beauty is a Truth and Truth is a Beauty".
Samuel Johnson wrote the preface to Shakespeare's plays in which he analyzed Shakespeare's style and characters. Johnson acknowledged Shakespeare's genius but also discussed three main faults: immoral plots, disregarding time and place unities, and loose plots. Johnson argued that critics should judge works based on their merits rather than following outdated conventions. He believed Shakespeare followed the unity of action but intentionally disregarded the unities of time and place, which was acceptable for history plays depicting events over long periods. Overall, Johnson provided a balanced analysis of Shakespeare's strengths and weaknesses through a classic critical lens.
John Keats was a key figure of the second generation of English Romantic poets. He lived from 1795 to 1821. Keats' poetry is characterized by sensual imagery and a focus on themes of beauty, love, nature, and fancy. As a Romantic poet, Keats emphasized appreciation of life, love, and beauty despite his own depression and impending death. He was heavily influenced by ancient Greek and Roman texts as well as Shakespeare, and focused on themes of death, sorrow, love, and nature that were common to Romanticism. Some of Keats' most famous works include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale."
This document summarizes Ngugi wa Thiong'o's commentary on abolishing the English department at the University of Nairobi. It discusses suggestions to establish a Department of African Literature and Culture instead that places Africa at the center. The current English department framework assumes the centrality of English literature and views other cultures as satellites. However, Ngugi argues for orienting education towards placing Kenya, East Africa, and Africa at the center to understand ourselves, with other cultures considered in relation to understanding Africa better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803 in Massachusetts to a long line of ministers. He was a key figure in establishing transcendentalism and published the influential book Nature in 1836, which outlined many ideas of the movement. Emerson had a successful career as a lecturer, publishing several essays. He had four children with his wife Lydia but also experienced the early deaths of family members. Emerson became a famous and influential writer and thinker in 19th century America before dying of pneumonia in 1882 in Concord, Massachusetts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an influential American essayist and poet in the 19th century who led the Transcendentalist movement. He published influential essays and gave over 1,500 lectures promoting ideas of individualism and criticism of social pressures. Some of his most famous works include Nature, The American Scholar, and essays in his First and Second Series collections. Emerson developed ideas around individuality, freedom, and the relationship between the soul and nature. Though his writing was complex, Emerson had a profound influence on American thinkers and remains an important figure in American intellectual history.
Ralph Waldo Emerson argues that individuals should not be envious and should believe in themselves and their ideas, even if they go against what others think. He states that important historical figures like Jesus, Martin Luther, Pythagoras, and Socrates were initially misunderstood but later seen as important. Emerson encourages readers to have faith in their own thoughts and not fear being misunderstood.
This document provides a biography and overview of the 19th century American poet Walt Whitman. It notes that he was a nurse during the Civil War and opposed the extension of slavery. One of his major works was Leaves of Grass, in which he pioneered the use of free verse. The document also analyzes his poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" about the loss of his mother, focusing on its themes of love, loss, and the poet's ability to translate personal experiences into song.
Thoreau was a 19th century American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor and historian. He is best known for his book "Walden", a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience", an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. The document provides biographical details about Thoreau and summarizes the main arguments from his influential essay "Civil Disobedience", including that individuals should prioritize their own moral judgments over the rule of the state, dissent through nonviolent civil disobedience, and that a single person standing up for justice can incite positive political change
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American philosopher, poet, and leader of the transcendentalist movement. He was born in 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts and educated at Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School. Emerson published several collections of essays and poems focused on nature, self-reliance, and individualism. He is considered one of the greatest writers and philosophers in American history.
Transcendentalism was a philosophical and literary movement that originated in the 1830s among New England intellectuals who believed in the inherent goodness of both people and nature. Key figures included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. They emphasized non-conformity, self-reliance and intimacy with nature. Thoreau's Walden documented his two years living simply in a cabin to gain spiritual insights through solitude and close observation of nature.
This document outlines a personal and family self-reliance plan. It discusses what self-reliance means, why the Lord wants us to become self-reliant, and our role and the Church's role in the process. Our role includes seeking guidance through prayer and the Spirit, writing down needs and goals, and working diligently. The Church's role is to teach correct principles and act as scaffolding, not do for us what we can do ourselves. The document provides guidance on developing a self-reliance plan and budget, and expectations for temporary assistance.
The document provides an analysis of Herman Melville's novella "Billy Budd, Sailor." It summarizes the plot, where Billy is a innocent sailor falsely accused of treason by the master-at-arms John Claggart, who envies Billy. Billy is convicted and hanged despite his innocence. The analysis argues that Billy's conviction and death were not due to a fair analysis by the jury, but rather due to injustices in the legal system and a struggle between good and evil, as well as Captain Vere's conscience conflicting with the law. It concludes that Billy was an innocent man caught between power and conscience.
La novela Mamita Yunai narra las experiencias de Sibaja y sus amigos Herminio y Calero trabajando para la United Fruit Company en Costa Rica en las primeras décadas del siglo XX. Describe las malas condiciones laborales, los bajos salarios y el abuso de poder de la compañía estadounidense. La obra también relata las huelgas y protestas organizadas para defender los derechos de los trabajadores, logrando eventualmente desmantelar el control de la United Fruit Company sobre la economía costarricense.
This document provides information about Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism. It discusses key beliefs of Transcendentalism such as the importance of intuition over religious doctrine. It also analyzes Emerson's short poem "Days" and discusses different interpretations of the word "hypocritic" in the poem and how readers perceive the human relationship with the passage of time.
Herman Melville was an American novelist born in 1819 in New York City. He had a difficult childhood, as his father died when he was young and left his family penniless. Melville worked various jobs including as a cabin boy and teacher before joining a whaling ship called the Acushnet in 1841. His experiences at sea inspired novels like Typee and Moby Dick. Later in life, Melville struggled financially and with his mental health, and some of his works were commercial and critical failures. He died in 1891, but his works experienced a revival in the 1920s thanks to biographies and studies written about him and his literature.
The document discusses analyzing Ralph Waldo Emerson's work "Nature" in order to design postcards of natural places that represent his philosophies. Students will read and discuss passages from "Nature" in groups to determine main ideas and important quotes. They will then design postcards of natural locations for Emerson, including pictures and notes about why he would enjoy visiting those places based on his views of nature expressed in his work.
This document discusses the Transcendentalist movement and Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "from Nature." Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement that believed basic truths could be reached through intuition rather than reason alone. Emerson's essay discusses how being in nature allows one to feel youthful and connected to the universal mind. It suggests nature reflects one's inner state of mind and can help alleviate egotism.
Intro To Romanticism And The Romantic Heroguest0480059b3
American Romanticism emerged as a reaction against Puritanism and the Age of Reason. Characteristics of Romanticism included an emphasis on emotion over reason, the imagination, and the individual human experience. Romantic works often featured improbable plots, remote settings, elements of terror, and Gothic themes like old castles and gloomy landscapes. The Romantic hero was typically a brooding, dark figure who was at odds with society, indulged in their own feelings, and pursued unattainable beauty or perfection.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts to a minister father. He attended Boston Latin School and later graduated from Harvard in 1821 in the middle of his class. After graduation, Emerson helped found the Transcendental Club and published his first essay anonymously in 1836 called Nature. In 1837 he delivered his famous "The American Scholar" address at Harvard calling for American literary independence from Europe.
The document discusses existentialism and its influence on mid-20th century literature and art. It focuses on key existentialist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and their ideas of individual responsibility and living in a meaningless world. It then examines how these ideas were expressed in the works of writers and artists like Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko through their use of themes like the absurd, uncertainty, and the search for meaning. It provides context on the development of abstract expressionism in New York and analyzes several important paintings to illustrate existentialist concepts.
This document summarizes the main characters in the play Volpone, including:
- Volpone, the protagonist who feigns illness to trick legacy hunters into giving him gifts in hopes of becoming his heir.
- Mosca, Volpone's servant who helps execute his deceptive plans but grows greedy.
- Corvino's beautiful wife Celia, who attracts Volpone's interest.
- Three legacy hunters (Corbaccio, Corvino, and Voltore) who are greedy for money and gifts.
- Corbaccio's loyal son who rescues Celia.
- Sir Politic Would-be and Peregrine, representing how foreigners get corrupted in
The document provides biographical information about three famous Transcendentalists: Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman. It discusses their beliefs and major works. Thoreau lived simply in a cabin at Walden Pond and wrote Walden. Emerson's Nature expressed Transcendentalist ideas about finding God in nature. Whitman's Leaves of Grass celebrated American themes in free verse.
Emerson delivered the speech "The American Scholar" in 1837, declaring intellectual independence for America. He argued that scholars should find inspiration from nature, books, and their own actions rather than solely relying on past thinkers. Nature teaches scholars to classify elements and see connections, shaping their own interpretations. Books provide information but should inspire new thought, not be worshipped. A scholar's duty is to observe, guide others, and develop their own convictions despite lack of popularity. True scholars influence society through new ideas and freeing others from conformity.
1 RALPH WALDO EMERSON On Education RALPH WALDO .docxtarifarmarie
1
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
On Education
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803–1882) was among the foremost American
intellectuals of the nineteenth century. His father, a Unitarian minister, settled the family in
Concord, Massachusetts, where Emerson lived virtually all his life. When his father died,
Emerson was seven years old, and his mother was essentially destitute. She worked at various
jobs to keep the family together, but there were nights when they did not have enough to eat.
Emerson’s maiden aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, was a highly intelligent woman and was
responsible, in part, for Emerson’s earliest education.
Despite having little or no money, Emerson went to Boston Latin School, then enrolled
in Harvard at age fourteen. After graduation he taught briefly at an uncle’s school, then opened
his own school for girls, which he operated for about four years. Eventually he realized that
teaching was not the right vocation for him, and he decided to become a minister. He went to
Harvard Divinity School but found he had difficulty accepting the religious dogma at the heart
of the program. He continued to have a problem with religious strictures, and even though he
became a popular Unitarian minister in Boston, he eventually gave up his career in the church.
What he decided to do instead was to become a lecturer and public speaker. In the
years before and after the Civil War (1861–1865), many speakers toured the United States
almost the way popular entertainers do today. Emerson was a popular intellectual whose style
of delivery and quality of thought engaged New Englanders for decades. He was known in
Europe as well, where he visited thinkers and absorbed ideas from the new wave of Romantic
philosophy that emanated primarily from Germany. He thought of himself as an Idealist,
although he was involved with a group of intellectuals who described themselves as
Transcendentalists.
Transcendentalism was not a systematic philosophy, but a way of approaching life by
emphasizing the human soul, the soul’s connection with nature, and the elevation of the spirit
over materialism. Considering that the United States was enjoying a tremendous wave of
materialist expansion during his lifetime, his views were what we would today call
countercultural. His first book, Nature (1836), was a short tribute to his love of nature,
especially his love of the woods around Concord. Some commentators hold that most of his
later beliefs are either expressed or hinted at in this volume. Emerson praised freedom,
intuition, respect for conscience, spontaneity, and personal responsibility, among other values.
For Emerson, to praise something as “natural” was high praise indeed.
Like his neighbor Henry David Thoreau, Emerson campaigned against slavery and,
during the Civil War, lobbied Washington to emancipate the slaves. He was a lifelong
abolitionist and, again like Thoreau, refused to recognize laws that he felt went against nature.
For ins.
Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered an oration titled "The American Scholar" to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College in 1837. The oration outlines the duties and influences of the American scholar. It discusses how scholars should be influenced by nature, past works, and action/labor rather than just books. Emerson states the duties of American scholars are to use self-trust and sacrifice to communicate noble thoughts to the public and act as the world's eye and heart.
Emerson viewed history as a "universal mind" that is common and accessible to all. He believed that one cannot fully understand a person without understanding their full history. Similarly, he saw similarities between history and nature in their endless variety. Emerson advocated bringing history to a personal level to make it more relevant by focusing on the ideas and values of people, rather than just dates. He stated that a person's experiences in life and knowledge are better sources than books alone.
Response to chapters 3 and 4 of sumara elan 8410 2 15-04Buffy Hamilton
The document summarizes key ideas from chapters 3 and 4 of Sumara's text, including the concept of "unskinning" where relationships with texts allow readers to shed their skins and rewrite their selves. It discusses how reading forms collective selves and histories through interactions between readers, texts, and contexts. The document also reflects on implications for the author's research interests and questions around reconceptualizing literature curriculum to view reading as an act of inquiry rather than searching for fixed meanings.
A Philosophical Commentary On Emerson S Essay Quot Experience QuotRichard Hogue
This document provides a philosophical commentary and analysis of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Experience." It summarizes the key perspectives of four commentaries on Emerson's work. They agree that Emerson's ideas were influenced by Kant's distinction between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds. However, they disagree on whether Emerson legitimately developed Kant's ideas or strayed from them. The document aims to understand Emerson's philosophy of experience and mood in the context of more recent philosophical developments.
This document provides an overview of reader response theory and hermeneutics. It discusses several prominent theorists who contributed to the development of reader response criticism, including Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wolfgang Iser, and Hans Robert Jauss. It also summarizes Arthur Miller's focus on how people understand and confront their past experiences in his plays. Reader response theory holds that meaning is constructed through the reader's interaction with the text, and is influenced by their historical and cultural context.
This document outlines 9 common approaches to literary criticism: formalist, biographical, historical, gender, psychological, sociological, mythological, reader-response, and deconstructionist. Each approach is summarized, including its key goals and perspectives. For example, formalist criticism examines the text's formal elements like style and structure, biographical criticism uses an author's life to understand their works, and deconstructionist criticism believes language cannot represent reality in a fixed way.
The document discusses the influence of Indian philosophy on American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. It outlines Emerson's background and ideas, as well as key concepts in Indian philosophy such as those found in the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, and Vedas. The document argues that Emerson was deeply influenced by these Indian texts and concepts, as his ideas around transcendentalism, the oversoul, illusion, and the unity of self closely mirrored teachings found in Indian scriptures. Several scholars are cited showing how Emerson incorporated and was stimulated by these Indian philosophical influences.
Literary criticism involves analyzing and interpreting works of literature. There are several approaches to literary criticism, including formalist, which focuses on elements like structure and symbolism within the text; biographical, which examines the influence of the author's life; and psychological, which applies theories like Freudian concepts to understand characters. Literary theory provides different lenses through which texts can be interpreted.
An archetype refers to universal symbols, themes, characters and images found across literature that reveal basic human truths. Archetypal criticism seeks to identify these recurring patterns and interpret them as manifestations of universal human experiences. Examples of archetypes include common literary tropes like the hero's journey, conflicts between order and chaos, and stock characters like the innocent youth, bully, or wise old man. Archetypal critics believe these patterns resonate with all people regardless of time or place.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was ahead of his time in supporting women's rights in the 19th century. He believed that women deserved equal rights and status to men, including in education, employment, property ownership, marriage, and suffrage. Emerson was influenced by the strong women in his own life. In lectures, he argued that what was dismissed as women's intuition was actually quicker thought, and that society failed to recognize women's individual existence and talents separate from men. Emerson saw women as playing an important role in advancing society and believed true genius encompassed both masculine and feminine traits.
The document contains excerpts from multiple sources discussing various topics related to the Enlightenment era, including analyses of works by Rousseau, Shelley, and Jefferson. It also includes questions about whether certain statements or facts need to be cited and explanations/examples of citation practices.
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection shook the literary world and influenced both literary creation and criticism. His idea that humans are part of biological evolution was incorporated into many naturalistic works by writers like Émile Zola. Literary Darwinism later emerged as a school of literary criticism founded by Joseph Carroll that uses evolutionary psychology concepts to interpret works through an evolutionary lens, exploring universal patterns of human behaviors related to reproduction, resource acquisition, and competition. While still developing, literary Darwinism has expanded literary analysis beyond other theories by focusing on evolved human nature represented in literature.
English 205Masterworks of English LiteratureHANDOUTSCritica.docxYASHU40
English 205:
Masterworks of English Literature
HANDOUTS
Critical Approaches to Literature
Plain text version of this document.
Described below are nine common critical approaches to the literature. Quotations are from X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia’s Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Sixth Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pages 1790-1818.
· Formalist Criticism: This approach regards literature as “a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms.” All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work itself. Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the elements of form—style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.—that are found within the text. A primary goal for formalist critics is to determine how such elements work together with the text’s content to shape its effects upon readers.
· Biographical Criticism: This approach “begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual people and that understanding an author’s life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work.” Hence, it often affords a practical method by which readers can better understand a text. However, a biographical critic must be careful not to take the biographical facts of a writer’s life too far in criticizing the works of that writer: the biographical critic “focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the author’s life.... [B]iographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with irrelevant material.”
· Historical Criticism: This approach “seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography and milieu.” A key goal for historical critics is to understand the effect of a literary work upon its original readers.
· Gender Criticism: This approach “examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works.” Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of approaches, including the so-called “masculinist” approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature “full of unexamined ‘male-produced’ assumptions.” Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combatting such attitudes—by questioning, for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeare’s play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist critics include “analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text” and “examin[ing] how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept th ...
Assignment InstructionsWrite a 500-750 word essay on one of the fo.docxsimba35
Assignment Instructions
Write a 500-750 word essay on one of the following topics. The word count does not include formatting or the works cited page.
Write a critical analysis of one of the works from weeks 1 or 2. An overview of approaches can be found
here
, but many are quite straightforward. Psychological, gender, sociological, biographical, and historical are all approaches that many use naturally in viewing a work. However, if your interest lies elsewhere, feel free to choose another approach.
Compare and contrast two of the stories from weeks 1 and 2. Be sure that you have isolated a strong and debatable thesis on which to build the essay. Simply pointing out the differences is not analysis. Toward that end, you may want to focus on a specific element of the stories.
If there's an aspect of the stories from these two weeks that particularly interests you, you may choose your own topic, but you must run it by me first to be sure it is headed in an analytical direction.
Your essay should be formatted in
MLA style
, including double spacing throughout. All sources should be properly cited both in the text and on a works cited page. As with most academic writing, this essay should be written in third person. Please avoid both first person (I, we, our, etc.) and second person (you, your).
In the upper left-hand corner of the paper, place your name, the professor’s name, the course name, and the due date for the assignment on consecutive lines. Double space your information from your name onward, and don't forget a title. All papers should be in Times New Roman font with 12-point type with one-inch margins all the way around your paper. All paragraph indentations should be indented five spaces (use the tab key) from the left margin. All work is to be left justified. When quoting lines in literature, please research the proper way to cite short stories, plays, or poems.
You should use the online APUS library to look for scholarly sources. Be careful that you don’t create a "cut and paste" paper of information from your various sources. Your ideas are to be new and freshly constructed. Also, take great care not to plagiarize.
Whatever topic you choose you will need a debatable thesis. A
thesis
is not a fact, a quote, or a question. It is your position on the topic. The reader already knows the story; you are to offer him a new perspective based on your observations.
Since the reader is familiar with the story, summary is unnecessary. Rather than tell him what happened, tell him what specific portions of the story support your thesis.
Formalist Criticism:
This approach regards literature as “a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms.” All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work itself. Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the elements of
form
—style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.—that are found within the text. A primary goal for formalist critic ...
This document provides an overview of American Romanticism and its influence on Victorian mourning customs in the 19th century. It discusses how Romanticism emphasized nature, individualism, and rejecting traditions from the past. These ideals manifested in mourning rituals like spirit photography and memorial photography that celebrated the individual. The document also examines how public displays of grief today reflect American Romanticism through "walls of grief" that allow for sharing personal memories and photos.
The document provides an overview of American Romanticism and Victorian mourning customs as part of a mid-term exam on American literature. It discusses how Romanticism challenged rationalism by emphasizing nature, individuality, and an original American culture. It also examines how popular culture manifested these Romantic ideals through spiritualism and the development of American mourning practices like post-mortem photography.
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1. Summary and Analysis of "The American Scholar"
About "The American Scholar"
Originally titled "An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge,
[Massachusetts,] August 31, 1837," Emerson delivered what is now referred to as "The
American Scholar" essay as a speech to Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa Society, an honorary
society of male college students with unusually high grade point averages. At the time,
women were barred from higher education, and scholarship was reserved exclusively for
men. Emerson published the speech under its original title as a pamphlet later that same
year and republished it in 1838. In 1841, he included the essay in his book Essays, but
changed its title to "The American Scholar" to enlarge his audience to all college
students, as well as other individuals interested in American letters. Placed in his Man
Thinking: An Oration (1841), the essay found its final home in Nature; Addresses, and
Lectures (1849
The text begins with an introduction (paragraphs 1-7) in which Emerson explains that his intent is to explore
the scholar as one function of the whole human being: The scholar is "Man Thinking." The remainder of the
essay is organized into four sections, the first three discussing the influence of nature (paragraphs 8 and 9), the
influence of the past and books (paragraphs 10-20), and the influence of action (paragraphs 21-30) on the
education of the thinking man. In the last section (paragraphs 31-45), Emerson considers the duties of the
scholar and then discusses his views of America in his own time.
Readers should number each paragraph in pencil as these Notes make reference to individual paragraphs in the
essay.
Summary and Analysis of "The American Scholar" Paragraphs 1-7 - "Man
Thinking"
Emerson opens "The American Scholar" with greetings to the college president and
members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College. Pointing out the differences
between this gathering and the athletic and dramatic contests of ancient Greece, the
poetry contests of the Middle Ages, and the scientific academies of nineteenth-century
Europe, he voices a theme that draws the entire essay together: the notion of an
independent American intelligentsia that will no longer depend for authority on its
European past. He sounds what one critic contends is "the first clarion of an American
literary renaissance," a call for Americans to seek their creative inspirations using
America as their source, much like Walt Whitman would do in Leaves of Grass eighteen
years later. In the second paragraph, Emerson announces his theme as "The American
Scholar" not a particular individual but an abstract ideal
The remaining five paragraphs relate an allegory that underlies the discussion to follow.
According to an ancient fable, there was once only "One Man," who then was divided into
many men so that society could work more efficiently. Ideally, society labors together —
each person doing his or her task — so that it can function properly. However, society
has now subdivided to so great an extent that it no longer serves the good of its citizens.
And the scholar, being a part of society, has degenerated also. Formerly a "Man
Thinking," the scholar is now "a mere thinker," a problem that Emerson hopes to correct
successfully by re-familiarizing his audience with how the true scholar is educated and
what the duties of this scholar are
Summary and Analysis of "The American Scholar" Paragraphs 8-9 - The
Influence of Nature
In these two paragraphs comprising the first section on how a scholar should be
educated, Emerson envisions nature as a teacher that instructs individuals who observe
the natural world to see — eventually — how similar their minds and nature are. The first
similarity he discusses concerns the notion of circular power — a theme familiar to
readers of the Nature essay — found in nature and in the scholar's spirit. Both nature and
the scholar's spirit, "whose beginning, whose ending he never can find — so entire, so
boundless," are eternal
Order is another similarity — as it is in Nature — between the scholar and nature. At
first, the mind views a chaotic and infinite reality of individual facts, but then it begins to
classify these facts into categories, to make comparisons and distinctions. A person
2. discovers nature's laws and can understand them because they are similar to the
operations of the intellect. Eventually, we realize that nature and the soul — both
proceeding from what Emerson terms "one root" — are parallel structures that mirror
each other (Emerson's term for "parallel" may be misleading; he says that nature is the
"opposite" of the soul). So, a greater knowledge of nature results in a greater
understanding of the self, and vice versa. The maxims "Know thyself" and "Study nature"
are equivalent: They are two ways of saying the same thing
Summary and Analysis of "The American Scholar" Paragraphs 10-20 - The
Influence of the Past
Emerson devotes much of his discussion to the second influence on the mind, past
learning — or, as he expresses it, the influence of books. In the first three paragraphs of
this section, he emphasizes that books contain the learning of the past; however, he also
says that these books pose a great danger. While it is true that books transform mere
facts ("short-lived actions") into vital truths ("immortal thoughts"), every book is
inevitably a partial truth, biased by society's standards when it was written. Each age
must create its own books and find its own truths for itself
Following this call for each age's creating truth, Emerson dwells on other dangers in books. They are
dangerous, he says, because they tempt the scholar away from original thought. Excessive respect for the
brilliance of past thinkers can discourage us from exploring new ideas and seeking individualized truths.
The worst example of slavish deference to past thinkers is the bookworm, a pedant who focuses all thought on
trivial matters of scholarship and ignores large, universal ideas. This type of person becomes passive and
uncreative, and is the antithesis of Emerson's ideal of the creative imagination: "Man hopes. Genius creates. To
create, — to create, — is the proof of a divine presence." The non-creative bookworm is more spiritually
distanced from God — and, therefore, from nature — than is the thinker of original thoughts.
But the genius, too, can suffer from the undue influence of books. Emerson's example of this kind of sufferer
are the English dramatic poets, who, he says, have been "Shakespearized" for two hundred years: Rather than
producing new, original texts and thoughts, they mimic Shakespeare's writings. Citing an Arabic proverb that
says that one fig tree fertilizes another — just like one author can inspire another — Emerson suggests that
true scholars should resort to books only when their own creative genius dries up or is blocked.
The last three paragraphs of this section refer to the pleasures and benefits of reading, provided it is done
correctly. There is a unique pleasure in reading. Because ancient authors thought and felt as people do today,
books defeat time, a phenomenon that Emerson argues is evidence of the transcendental oneness of human
minds. Qualifying his previous insistence on individual creation, he says that he never underestimates the
written word: Great thinkers are nourished by any knowledge, even that in books, although it takes a
remarkably independent mind to read critically at all times. This kind of reading mines the essential vein of
truth in an author while discarding the trivial or biased.
Emerson concedes that there are certain kinds of reading that are essential to an educated person: History,
science, and similar subjects, which must be acquired by laborious reading and study. Foremost, schools must
foster creativity rather than rely on rote memorization of texts: ". . . [schools] can only highly serve us, when
they aim not to drill, but to create
Summary and Analysis of "The American Scholar" Paragraphs 21-30 - The
Influence of Action
In this third section, Emerson comments on the scholar's need for action, for physical
labor. He rejects the notion that the scholar should not engage in practical action. Action,
while secondary to thought, is still necessary: "Action is with the scholar subordinate, but
it is essential." Furthermore, not to act — declining to put principle into practice — is
cowardly. The transcendental concept of the world as an expression of ourselves makes
action the natural duty of a thinking person
Emerson observes the difference between recent actions and past actions. Over time, he says, a person's past
deeds are transformed into thought, but recent acts are too entangled with present feelings to undergo this
3. transformation. He compares "the recent act" to an insect larva, which eventually metamorphoses into a
butterfly — symbolic of action becoming thought.
Finally, he praises labor as valuable in and of itself, for such action is the material creatively used by the
scholar. An active person has a richer existence than a scholar who merely undergoes a second-hand existence
through the words and thoughts of others. The ideal life has "undulation" — a rhythm that balances, or
alternates, thought and action, labor and contemplation: "A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to
think." This cycle creates a person's character that is far superior to the fame or the honor too easily expected
by a mere display of higher learning
Summary and Analysis of "The American Scholar" Paragraphs 31-45 - The
Scholar's Duties
After Emerson has discussed how nature, books, and action educate the scholar, he now
addresses the scholar's obligations to society. First, he considers these obligations in
general, abstract terms; then he relates them to the particular situation of the American
scholar
The scholar's first and most important duty is to develop unflinching self-trust
and a mind that will be a repository of wisdom for other people. This is a difficult
task, Emerson says, because the scholar must endure poverty, hardship, tedium,
solitude, and other privations while following the path of knowledge. Self-
sacrifice is often called for, as demonstrated in Emerson's examples of two
astronomers who spent many hours in tedious and solitary observation of space
in order to make discoveries that benefited mankind. Many readers will wonder
just how satisfying the reward really is when Emerson acknowledges that the
scholar "is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human
nature."
The true scholar is dedicated to preserving the wisdom of the past and is
obligated to communicating the noblest thoughts and feelings to the public. This
last duty means that the scholar — "who raises himself from private
considerations, and breathes and lives on public illustrious thoughts" — must
always remain independent in thinking and judgment, regardless of popular
opinion, fad, notoriety, or expediency. Because the scholar discovers universal
ideas, those held by the universal human mind, he can communicate with people
of all classes and ages: "He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart."
Although he appears to lead a reclusive and benign life, the scholar must be
brave because he deals in ideas, a dangerous currency. Self-trust is the source
of courage and can be traced to the transcendental conviction that the true
thinker sees all thought as one; universal truth is present in all people, although
not all people are aware of it. Instead of thinking individually, we live vicariously
through our heroes; we seek self-worth through others when we should search
for it in ourselves. The noblest ambition is to improve human nature by fulfilling
our individual natures.
Emerson concludes the essay by observing that different ages in Western
civilization, which he terms the Classic, the Romantic, and the Reflective (or the
4. Philosophical) periods, have been characterized by different dominant ideas, and
he acknowledges that he has neglected speaking about the importance of
differences between ages while speaking perhaps too fervently about the
transcendental unity of all human thought.
Emerson now proposes an evolutionary development of civilization, comparable
to the development of a person from childhood to adulthood. The present age —
the first half of the 1800s — is an age of criticism, especially self-criticism.
Although some people find such criticism to be an inferior philosophy, Emerson
believes that it is valid and important. Initiating a series of questions, he asks
whether discontent with the quality of current thought and literature is such a
bad thing; he answers that it is not. Dissatisfaction, he says, marks a transitional
period of growth and evolution into new knowledge: "If there is any period one
would desire to be born in,is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the
new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; . . . This [present] time,
like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it."
Emerson applauds the views of English and German romantic poets like
Wordsworth and Goethe, who find inspiration and nobility in the lives and work
of common people. Instead of regarding only royal and aristocratic subjects as
appropriate for great and philosophical literature, the Romantic writers reveal
the poetry and sublimity in the lives of lower-class and working people. Their
writing is full of life and vitality, and it exemplifies the transcendental doctrine of
the unity of all people. Ironically, we should remember that at the beginning of
the essay, Emerson advocated Americans' throwing off the European mantle that
cloaks their own culture. Here, he distinguishes between a European tradition
that celebrates the lives of common people, and one that celebrates only the
monarchical rule of nations: "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of
Europe."
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Making special reference to the Swedish philosopher and mystic Emanuel
Swedenborg, Emerson contends that although Swedenborg has not received his
due recognition, he revealed the essential connection between the human mind
and the natural world, the fundamental oneness of humans and nature. Emerson
finds much inspiration for his own thinking and writing in the doctrines of
Swedenborg.
5. In his long, concluding paragraph, Emerson dwells on the romantic ideal of the
individual. This fundamentally American concept, which he develops at much
greater length in the essay "Self-Reliance," is America's major contribution to
the world of ideas. The scholar must be independent, courageous, and original;
in thinking and acting, the scholar must demonstrate that America is not the
timid society it is assumed to be. We must refuse to be mere purveyors of the
past's wisdom: ". . . this confidence in the unsearched might of man, belongs by
all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar," who
will create a native, truly American culture
Summary and Analysis of "The American Scholar" Glossary
Troubadours A class of lyric poets and poet-musicians, they lived in southern France in
the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries and composed poems of love and chivalry
sere Withered.
constellation Harp another name for Lyra, a constellation of stars in the northern hemisphere; it contains
Vega, the fourth brightest star in the heavens.
monitory A warning.
refractory Unruly.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 B.C.) A Roman statesman and Stoic philosopher, he is best known for
his speech making.
Locke, John (1632-1704) An English philosopher, Locke developed a theory of cognition that denied the
existence of innate ideas and asserted that all thought is based on our senses. His works influenced
American Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards, who modified Puritan doctrine to allow for more play of
reason and intellect, building a foundation for Unitarianism and, eventually, transcendentalism.
Bacon, Francis (1561-1626) An English essayist, statesman, and philosopher, he proposed a theory
called the inductive method, a scientific knowledge based on observation and experiment.
Third Estate The "common people" under the French monarchy; the clergy and nobles formed the first
two estates.
emendators Those who make textual corrections.
efflux To flow outwardly.
fig tree A Mediterranean tree or shrub, widely cultivated for its edible fruit.
Chaucer, Geoffrey (d. 1400) The English poet who wrote The Canterbury Tales.
Marvell, Andrew (1621-78) An English metaphysical poet, his works include "To His Coy Mistress" and
"Damon the Mower."
Dryden, John (1631-1700) English poet, dramatist, and essayist.
Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.) A Greek philosopher, he formulated the philosophy of idealism, which holds that
the concepts or ideas of things are more perfect — and, therefore, more real — than the material things
themselves.
6. elements Here, the basic principles of a subject.
pecuniary Of, or involving, money.
valetudinarian A person in poor health, or one who is constantly anxious about his or her state of health.
empyrean The highest reaches of heaven; paradise.
ferules Sticks used for punishing children.
Savoyards Inhabitants of Savoy, now a province of southeast France; during Emerson's lifetime,
Savoyards were renowned for their woodcarving.
Algiers The capital of Algeria, a country in northwest Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea.
copestones Meaning capstone, the top stone of a wall.
Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727) An English mathematician and scientist, Newton is chiefly remembered
for formulating the law of gravity.
unhandselled Unappreciated.
Druids Prehistoric Celtic priests.
Berserkirs Savage warriors of Norse mythology.
Alfred (d. 899) Alfred was the king (871-99) of what was then called West Saxony, in southwest England.
Flamsteed, John (1646-1719) English astronomer.
Herschel, Sir William (1738-1822) An English astronomer, he is credited for discovering Uranus, the
seventh planet from the sun.
glazed Having a roof of glass.
promulgate To make known publicly.
fetish An obsessive preoccupation.
ephemeral Short-lived; transitory.
presentiment A feeling that something is about to occur.
firmament The expanse of the heavens; the sky; poetically, a symbol of strength.
signet A small seal pressed into a hot wax wafer in order to make a document official.
Macdonald Emerson substitutes this typical name of a Scottish chief in the old proverb, "Where Macgregor
sits, there is the head of the table."
Linnaeus, Carolus (1707-78) The Swedish botanist who founded the modern classification system for
plants and animals known as binomial nomenclature.
Davy, Sir Humphry (1778-1829) English chemist.
Cuvier, Georges (1769-1832) A French naturalist, he is considered to be the founder of comparative
anatomy.
7. Provencal Minstrelsy Provence, an ancient province in southeast France, was a center for troubadours.
lumber room A room cluttered with discarded household articles and furniture.
Goldsmith, Oliver (d. 1774) English poet, playwright, and novelist.
Burns, Robert (1759-96) The Scottish poet who wrote "Tam o'Shanter" and "Auld Lang Syne."
Cowper, William (1731-1800) The English poet whose major work is The Task.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832) A German writer, he profoundly influenced literary
romanticism; he is noted for his two-part dramatic poem Faust, published in 1808 and 1832.
Wordsworth, William (1770-1850) An English poet, his most important collection, Lyrical Ballads
(1798), helped establish romanticism in England.
Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881) English historian, philosopher, and essayist.
Pope, Alexander (1688-1744) English poet and translator.
Johnson, Samuel (1709-84) The English writer and critic who wrote Lives of the Poets, a study of
English poetry.
Gibbon, Edward (1737-94) Considered to be one of the greatest English historians, Gibbon authored the
six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688-1772) A Swedish scientist, mystic, philosopher, and theologian,
Swedenborg insisted that the scriptures are the immediate word of God. He postulated many scientific
theories that were far ahead of their time, including the idea that all matter is made up of tiny swirling
particles (later called atoms). He also set out to prove the existence of an immortal soul. Theologically, he
asserted that the heavenly trinity is reproduced in human beings as soul, body, and mind. His teachings
became the nucleus of the Church of the New Jerusalem.
Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich (1746-1827) Swiss educator
Emerson's The American Scholar - Mere Thinkers and Men Thinking
In his speech, "The American Scholar," Emerson expresses his distaste for the "mere thinkers" who obtain their ideas from the
work of other men. These other men, called "Men Thinking," are the ones who truly deserve credit because they derive their
ideas from nature and the world. A truly unique idea is often one that is stumbled upon by a man while he is alone, with no
distractions or outside sources to draw information from. He simply takes his knowledge of the world and draws it together, as
described by Emerson: "To the young mind everything is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things
and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on
tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground whereby contrary and remote things
cohere and flower out from one stem." Nature allows man the freedom to tie together his knowledge and create his own ideas.
Ideas that are truly new are ones that are discovered in this way by "Men Thinking", because ideas of mere thinkers are
prompted by literature containing old ideas. Mere thinkers are the bookworms who spend their days studying the philosophies
of thinkers, learning from them, but not creating their own ideas. Emerson writes that books are written by "Men of talent, that
8. is who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles." He believes that these men,
although intelligent, have been heavily influenced by other people, and therefore have biased opinions which have not come
directly from their own minds. Mere thinkers combine theologies from various sources, but have little that they can consider to
be their own private thought.
Emerson's reasoning, although it seems logical, has a paradoxical flaw in it. Although he his advocating pure thought, by writing
down his thoughts, he is helping to contribute to the massive amounts of mere thinkers who will hear his ideas and be
influenced by them. Emerson writes that "The sacredness which attaches to the art of creation, the act of thought, is transferred
to the record." He gives the impression that he wants to keep creative thoughts sacred by not writing them down and making
them available to others. Yet at the exact same time as he is describing this phenomenon, he is doing exactly what he is opposed
to. Although he mentions later that the one good purpose books serve is to inspire, his work has done much more than simply
inspiring people. He has become one of the great thinkers who people study; a more modern Cicero, Locke, or Bacon. His work
has contributed more to the increase in population of mere thinkers than it has to the increase of "Man Thinking" because he is
defying his own principle
STRUCTURE AND THEMES
Emerson begins his address with a polite nod to the tradition of such talks on the role and
especially the future of learning and the arts in America, but he quickly separates himself
from the traditional celebratory and jingoistic tone of such performances. He does not praise
American cultural productions but instead wishes that the "sluggard intellect of this continent"
would awake and produce "something better than the exertions of mechanical skill," a clear
jibe at the anti-intellectualism and the practical, materialistic bent of American life (p. 81).
Then, as he typically does at the beginning of his essays, Emerson attempts to ground his
discourse in an appeal to common experience, in this case the sense of incompleteness and
isolation that follows upon the specialization of roles in society. He recounts the fable that
"the gods, in the beginning, divided man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself."
"The fable implies," Emerson goes on, "that the individual to possess himself, must
sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But unfortunately, this
original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed in multitudes, has been so
minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered."
What we have then, in "the divided or social state," is a condition in which "Man is thus
metamorphosed into a thing, into many things," but is nowhere complete (pp. 82, 83).
In this scheme the ideal of "Man Thinking," that is, the intellectual and creative facets of the
individual self, are wrongly delegated to the scholar. But it is worth noting that this fable and
Emerson's interpretation of it also link up to the economic developments of the age and in
particular to the financial crisis brought on by the panic of 1837. Emerson describes here a
kind of transcendental version of what Karl Marx, a few years later in Europe, would call the
alienation of labor, the dis-ease brought on by industrialization and specialization, where the
9. worker has no sense of a whole task or a whole product completed because he is relegated to
some partial and repetitive function within a large-scale industrial operation. Emerson is not
finally concerned with such a materialist economic analysis, but he is responding with some
urgency, as so many writers did, to the increasingly complex, urban, and industrial drift of
nineteenth-century society.
After this introduction, the first half of the essay is
devoted to an elaboration of the principal formative
influences on the scholar's development. Still
influenced by his preacherly habit of numbering the
points of his discourse, Emerson divides this section
of the essay with roman numerals to signal the three
major influences: nature, books (or what Emerson
calls "the mind of the Past"), and action. What is
noteworthy about this list, of course, is the demotion
of books and formal learning to a secondary position
in the hierarchy of influences. Or, conversely, the
elevation of nature to the primary position. Of course,
those familiar with Emerson's little book Nature
would not be surprised. And the sense in which
Emerson thinks of nature as a teacher to the potential
scholar, "this school-boy under the bending dome of
day" (p. 86), corresponds to the uses of
natureommodity, beauty, language, and disciplines he
enumerates and describes them in Nature. Particularly
he has in mind the last of these uses, "discipline," by
which he means something like "teaching": nature
teaches us through its immense richness and variety
and invites us to probe and fathom its complexity
through our lower intellectual faculty, the
Understanding. But nature also appeals to our higher
faculty, the Reason, to intuit underlying truths and the
divine laws that animate all creation. Referring to the
process of sealing an envelope with a wax seal
imprinted on the paper, Emerson employs one of his
most resonant metaphors to describe the relation
between nature and the mind or spirit that brings it
forth: "He shall see that nature is the opposite of the
soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one
is print." And thus, as he concludes, "the ancient
precept, 'Know thyself,' and the modern precept,
'study nature,' become at last one maxim" (pp. 86,
87).
The next section of Emerson's discourse takes up the education of the scholar by books ("the
mind of the Past"), in what must have been to his auditors the most surprising if not the most
perverse part of his address. Not only is this traditional mainstay of education relegated to
second place, as it were, but book learning also undergoes further disparagement. The
problem of the book, for Emerson, is the same problem that attaches to any doctrine or form;
it supplants the original thought or spirit that created it: "The sacredness which attaches to the
10. act of creation,he act of thought,s instantly transferred to the record. . . . Instantly, the book
becomes noxious. The guide is a tyrant" (pp. 889). Books thus become a bar to original
thought, and traditional education becomes an exercise in imitation. The right use, indeed the
only legitimate use of books is to inspire, to prompt us to think originally or, as Emerson
phrases it more boldly, to "read God directly" (p. 91). If this last notion made some in the
audience uneasy, as verging on heresy, it would get worse, for Emerson would return to
Harvard the following year and, in his speech to the divinity school students, employ this
same critique of the book to attack orthodox Christianity and its reliance on a literal
interpretation of the Bible.
Lest one think, on the basis of this principle, that one can simply do without books or formal
education, Emerson ends this section with an important caveat that puts us all back in the
classroom: "Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man. History
and exact science he must learn by laborious reading." Yet even here, in getting back to
basics, Emerson has a dig for Harvard: speaking of colleges, he says, "they can only serve us,
when they aim not to drill, but to create" (p. 93). Because the traditional Harvard pedagogy
involved endless numbing recitations sections, his implication is clear.
The third influence on the scholar's development is action, and by his emphasis on this
requirement Emerson seeks to counter the stereotype, especially common in nineteenth-
century America, that intellectuals reside in ivory towers and shirk the rough-and-tumble of
ordinary life and work. The ground for the scholar's action is the same principle that Emerson
announces in the "Nature" section of the essay: nature and the world correspond to the self
and provide the tangible means to both self-knowledge and productive action: "The world,his
shadow of the soul or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my
thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I launch eagerly into this resounding tumult"
(p. 95). Besides, thought and action participate in what Emerson calls "That great principle of
Undulation" or Polarity, by which apparently opposite qualities actually depend upon one
another and call one another into being. This principle is "ingrained in every atom" and
partakes of the overarching polarity of Power and Form in life, as Emerson would sketch it in
"Experience" a few years later (p. 98).
The education of the scholar completed, it remains for Emerson to sketch his duties and to
address the larger issue of how to solve the problem of Americans' long-standing sense of
cultural inferiority with respect to Europe. His duties are rather easily dispensed with; they are
conveyed in a sort of pep talk that Emerson addresses to the audience (and to himself) out of
his own experience and hopes for his fledgling career as public intellectual. Though the
scholar is liable to suffer disdain, poverty, and solitude in keeping on the right track,
eventually he emerges as a hero:
He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by
preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies,
melodious verse, and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles the
human heart in all emergencies, in all solemn hours has uttered as its
commentary on the world of actions,hese he shall receive and impart. (Pp.
10102)
The concluding section of the essay is devoted to an anatomy of the power that the American
scholar will need to draw upon to produce this transformative effect on culture. This power
comes from a simple yet profound shift in how culture itself is defined and conceived: "This
11. revolution," Emerson says, "is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of
culture. The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man"
(p. 107). In thus locating the source of culture within the individual radical "domestication" if
ever there was onemerson disposes of the principal negative condition that had stood in the
way of America's cultural independence and maturity. Suddenly, instead of looking to Europe
we could simply look within. The embarrassing disparity between the long history of
European cultural production and the paucity of the same in the United States could be
transcended or rendered moot by the realization that Culture with a capital "C" did not consist
of the monuments and artifacts stored in museums or libraries but in the potential for self-
culture within the individual. This is "domestication" in a double sense: domestic as opposed
to foreign, and domestic as pertaining to the individual and the internal as opposed to the
public and the external. This subtle but profound shift in the conception of the sources, the
expression, and the transmission of high culture is what distinguished Emerson's call for
American literary independence from the myriad of such pronouncements that preceded it.
This is the foundation of Emerson's claim at the beginning of the essay that "our long
apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close" (p. 81), and his assertion, at the
end of the essay, that "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe" (p. 114).
Another sense of this domestication pertains to the subject matter of American art and the
artist's treatment of materials. There follows from Emerson's individual basis of culture,
which in turn comes from a belief in each person's ability to access the divine and its
manifestations in the world, a democratizing and anti-hierarchical turn in the arts.
Interestingly Emerson sees this trend as already having happened, not as prospective: "the
same movement which effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the state,
assumed in literature a very marked and as benign an aspect. Instead of the sublime and the
beautiful, the near, the low, the common, was explored and poetized" (p. 110). Thus Emerson
does not so much predict the radical democratic practice of Walt Whitman and the realists as
look back to English poets of the previous century and early-nineteenth-century Romantics:
"this idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, and in a newer time, of
Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle" (p. 112). There is no call yet, as there would be a few
years later in "The Poet," for poets to sing specifically American songs celebrating the
richness and diversity of the United States, and there are no Americans in Emerson's list of
literary models. Instead there is a kind of generic invocation of the ordinarythe meal in the
firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat"one of which has a
specifically American valence (p. 111). In fact, that already archaic word "firkin" signals that
Emerson is chiefly thinking along pre-existing literary lines, much as his own poetry, for all
the radical implications of his theory, remains largely grounded in conventional poetic diction
and forms.
Nevertheless, "The American Scholar" gave American intellectuals and would-be writers a
firm basis for overcoming their sense of cultural inferiority with respect to Europe and
especially England. Neither the immediate prospects for literature nor the materialistic
obsessions of contemporary business culture (in which idealistic young people have no choice
but to "turn drudges, or die of disgust") were promising, but the long-range outlook, based on
nature, self-culture, and a healthy skepticism about received wisdom, was hopeful (p. 114