A great American Literary Writer

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A great American Literary Writer!

• By, Ricky
• And
• Antoine

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, preacher, lecturer, poet and
  essayist, is perhaps the most central figure of
  the American Renaissance. His theories of
  literature, politics, society and the self not
  only lie at the root of all subsequent American
  writing but continue both to challenge and
  encourage all those who read him today. As Harold
  Bloom comments in his introductory essay to the
  volume, Emerson is the the mind of our climate,
  the principle source of the American difference
  in poetry and criticism and in a pragmatic
  post-philosophy.

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Major themes the writer covers

• The major themes that Ralph Waldo Emerson cover
  in most of his literary work is mostly dealing
  with the facts of nature,an he also wrote about
  the horror and fury of the war, and last but not
  least his experience of pain an struggle to
  become a better man for himself. (These are
  great words coming from a great author, That is
  true to life not just himself)!

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A Great Poet

• Ralph Waldo Emerson was a great writer, an poet
  for many of his great years in his lifetime. Even
  though he went through so much pain in his life
  dealing wit the pain of his father dying At a
  younger age forcing him to take over the family
  farming business.

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Background INFO

• Emerson was born in 1803 to a family that was
  cultured but poor. When he was only eight years
  old, his father, a Unitarian minister, died of
  tuberculosis. His mother, left with six growing
  children to care for, opened a boarding-house.
  The fathers place in the lives of the Emerson
  children was taken by their aunt. Mary Moody
  Emerson was a strict Calvinist who emphasized
  self-sacrifice and whose enormous energy drove
  the Emerson boys to achievement. she had the
  misfortune, Emerson later wrote, of spinning
  with a greater velocity than any of the other
  tops.
• Emerson entered Harvard at fourteen . He was an
  indifferent student,he ready widely in philosophy
  and theology. Upon graduation, Emerson took a job
  at a school run by his uncle and prepared
  himself, with many doubts, for the Unitarian
  ministry.

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Continue

• At the of twenty-five, he accepted a post at
  Bostons Second Church that same year, he
  married Ellen Tucker, a beautiful but fragile
  seventeen-year-old already in the early stages of
  tuberculosis. Seventeen months later, Ellen died.
• In later years, Emerson suffered from a severe
  loss of memory and had difficulty recalling the
  most ordinary words . This affliction resulted
  in his increasing public silence, and when he did
  appear in public, he read from notes.
• In autumn of 1881, Walt Whitman paid Emerson a
  visit of respect and was asked to dinner. Whitman
  wrote that Emerson though a listener and
  apparently an alert one, remained silent through
  the whole talk and discussion. A lady friend
  Louisa May Alcott quietly took a seat next to
  him, to give special attention. A good color in
  his face, eyes clear, with the well-known
  expression of sweetness, and the old
  clear-peering aspect quite the same .
• Six months later, Emerson was dead.

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Historical Period

• Emerson was writing in the great American
  Renaissance Period in American History. Ralph
  Waldo Emerson, as preacher, philosopher, and
  poet, embodied the finest spirit and highest
  ideals of his age. A thinker of bold originality,
  his essays and lectures offer models of clarity,
  style, and thought, which made him a formidable
  presence in 19th century American life.

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The literary Period

• As a complete critical portrait this volume
  contains pieces on Emersons poetry, essays and
  journals by such highly respected scholars as
  Stephen E. Whicher, Sacvan Bercovitch and Richard
  Poirer. Reprinted in the order of their
  publication, they provide an absorbing chronicle
  of modern critical responses to Emersons
  writing.

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One of the main theme of a major work

• Nature is the first in time (since it is always
  there) and the first in importance of the three.
  Nature's variety conceals underlying laws that
  are at the same time laws of the human mind "the
  ancient precept, Know thyself, and the modern
  precept, Study nature, become at last one
  maxim" (87).

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A New England Writer

• Many of Emerson's essays were initially delivered
  as lectures, both in Boston and on his lecture
  tours around the country. His book Nature, the
  volumes of Essays, and his poems were reprinted
  both in Boston and in England. Several of his
  essays ("Love," "Friendship," "Illusions") were
  bound in attractive small editions and marketed
  as "gift books." His poems and excerpts from his
  essays were often reprinted in literary
  collections and school anthologies of the
  nineteenth century. Emerson represents the
  audiences for his work in challenging ways, often
  imagining them as sleeping or resistant, as
  needing to be awakened and encouraged. He
  discusses their preoccupation with business and
  labor, with practical politics and economy their
  grief over the death of a child. He uses local
  and natural images familiar to the New Englanders
  at the same time he introduces his American
  audiences to names and references from a wide
  intellectual range (from Persian poets to
  sixth-century Welsh bards to Arabic medical texts
  to contemporary engineering reports). He has been
  a figure of considerable importance in modern
  American literary criticism and rhetoric (his
  discussions about language and speech, in
  particular), in American philosophy (influencing
  William James, Dewey, and more recently William
  Gass), and in discussions about education and
  literacy.

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The Genres He Used

• He wrote a great variety of Provoking
  contemporary criticism on those poets, novelist,
  and playwrights of the English language who are
  most widely appreciated and studied by readers
  everywhere!

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THE END