'Carlyle, Emerson and the Voiced Essay' -- from On Essays: Montaigne to the Present ed. T. Karshan and K. Murphy (Oxford University Press, 2020) (original) (raw)
Related papers
"Emerson and the Question of Style,"
Philosophy and Literature, 2019
In this paper, I focus on the provocative nature of Emerson's prose. In the face of its fragmentary nature and its apparent inconsistency it seems the reader of Emerson is left alone with the challenge of coming to a point for herself. But she is not utterly left alone. I examine Emerson's scattered remarks about his style, I take a clue from F. O. Matthiessen, and then I argue that the problem of Emerson's prose is the manifestation of a key problem in his philosophy of life: How to integrate the " knowledge of life by indirections " into a unified whole?
Religions, 2017
Given the exemplary studies of Thomas Carlyle's influence on the Boston intelligentsia of the 1830s and 1840s, for instance by Robert D. Richardson and Barbara L. Packer, we may wonder if there are other questions to ask on the subject-and then, not so much as a point of disagreement or divergence, but rather in a spirit of seeking what may come to light given that so many elemental aspects have been so well digested by others. Avoiding a rehearsal of expert observations, much less a rote retreading of key insights, I wish to focalize the present investigation by asking how, in particular, a single book-Sartor Resartus-affected Emerson's conception of what might be possible for him to think about literary, religious, and philosophical expression in terms of humor, satire, genre, and translation (specifically cultural translation); thus, I am asking about the interaction between form and content, and specifically how the form and content of Sartor Resartus makes itself known and available to Emerson. Borrowing from George Eliot, the foregoing notes resolve themselves into the query that guides the present investigation: how was reading Sartor Resartus an "epoch in the history of" Emerson's mind?
Instilling the sentiment : the poetic philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson
2010
did not leave behind himself a consistent philosophical system. His contribution to American, and not only American, philosophy and literature is of different nature. Irwin Edman (1951: v) in his introduction to Emerson's Essays writes that he does not read Emerson professionally. "For disclosures of the nature and signature of things," he says, "I prefer, on the whole, more explicit, more literal, and more analytic thinkers." Emerson indeed is neither explicit nor analytic, which is one of the reasons why he enjoys the reputation of a difficult philosopher. Still Edman (1951: v) admits that he does read Emerson, and he reads him because Emerson is "the thoughtful writer of prose which has, without any of the more patent devices of verse, the magical effects of poetry." In certain respects, Emerson is a complete failure as a philosopher. This is the result of his open hostility towards systematic thinking. Emerson's aunt is recorded to have said that no Emerson "is capable of deep investigation or of long continued thought," which some consider "the profoundest comment on her nephew" (Buell 1975: 45). A good illustration of Emerson's failure as a systematic thinker is his introduction to Nature. In his introduction Emerson (2006: I 5-6) sets out to clarify the basic terms employed in the treatise, most importantly the very term nature, which, as we all know, is capable of having manifold meanings. The most interesting passage is the last paragraph of the introduction, and it runs as follows: Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE. In enumerating the values of nature and casting up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses;-in its common and its philosophical import. In inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur. Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the river, the leaf. Art
The Impersonal Personified: Emerson's Poet
Textual Practice, 2019
In her analysis of the impersonal in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, not only does Sharon Cameron identify Emerson’s poet as a ‘practitioner of the impersonal’, she also notes that a double voice is at work throughout ‘The Poet’. This article intends to take on the exploration of the links between the impersonal and Emerson’s poet, to argue that the impersonal voice of the essays may refer back to the ideal poet. Doing so, I suggest that the poet can be conceived of as Emerson’s heteronym.