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Poslední úprava: David Lee Robbins, Ph.D. (03.02.2016)
In his recent and influential critical assessment of Emerson, John Carlos Rowe evaluates "the conventional critical reading of the American canon as principally an engagement with or reaction against Emersonian ideals." Which "side" one is on in this debate is important, he argues, because "the [Emersonian] ideals of individualism, intellectual abstraction, and transcendentalism often undermine the writer's political effectiveness." (John Carlos Rowe, At Emerson's Tomb [New York, Columbia University Press, 1997], back cover). Another contemporary critic, Lawrence Alan Rosenfeld, acknowledges that "The writer's freedom is in a sense the individual's freedom from convention, from the tyranny of the majority; Emerson understood brilliantly how deeply that freedom cut, and shaped an exemplary if still sometimes disturbing life and work of writerly freedom." But Rosenwald, like Rowe and many other late-twentieth-century Emerson scholars, asserts that "The stakes in judging Emerson are high, because he claimed to be a teacher and guide not only to the practice of art but also to the conduct of life." (Lawrence Alan Rosenwald, "Emerson," in Richard Wightman Fox and James T. Kloppenberg, eds., A Companion to American Thought [Cambridge, MA; Blackwell, 1995], pp. 204-207) This segment will review the critical debate on Emerson's work and ideas from the late nineteenth century to the present. |
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Poslední úprava: David Lee Robbins, Ph.D. (03.02.2016)
1) Oliver Wendell Holmes, excerpts from Ralph Waldo Emerson (1884); Henry James, "Emerson" (1888); John Jay Chapman, "Emerson" (1897) 2) William James, "Emerson" (1903); John Dewey, "Emerson" (1903) 3) Lewis Mumford, excerpts from The Golden Day (1925); F.O. Matthiessen, excerpts from American Renaissance (1941) 4) Stephen Whicher, excerpts from Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1953); Maurice Gonnaud, excerpts from An Uneasy Solitude: Individual and Society in the Work of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964; translated 1987); Eric Cheyfitz, "Forward" to An Uneasy Solitude (1987); Lawrence Alan Rosenfeld, "Translator's Preface" to An Uneasy Solitude; and Joel Porte, excerpts from Representative Man: Ralph Waldo Emerson in His Time (1979) 5) Barbara Packer, excerpts from Emerson's Fall: A New Interpretation of the Major Essays (1982); Carolyn Porter, excerpts from Seeing and Being: The Plight of the Participant Observer in Emerson, James, Adams, and Faulkner (1981); George Kateb, excerpts from Emerson and Self-Reliance (1995) 6) Richard Poirier, "Introduction" to Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Critical Edition of the Major Works (1990), and excerpts from A World Elsewhere: The Place of Style in American Literature (1966), The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian Reflections (1987), and Poetry and Pragmatism (1992); and Tony Tanner, "Introduction" to Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Poems (1995) and "Lustres and Condiments: Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Essays" in The American Mystery (2000) 7) Stanley Cavell, "Thinking of Emerson" (1979) and excerpts from Emerson's Transcendental Etudes (2003); and Robert Richardson, excerpts from Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995) 8) David Robinson, excerpts from Apostle of Culture: Emerson as Preacher and Lecturer (1982) and Emerson and the Conduct of Life: Pragmatism and ethical purpose in the later work (1993); David Van Leer, excerpts from Emerson's Epistemology: The argument of the essays (1986); and Lawrence Buell; excerpts from Emerson (2003); 9) Christopher Newfield, excerpts from The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America (1996); and John Carlos Rowe, excerpts from At Emerson's Tomb?: The Politics of Classic American Literature (1997) 10) Irving Howe, excerpts from The American Newness: Culture and Politics in the Age of Emerson (1986); Harold Bloom, "Mr. America" (1984), "Grandfather Emerson" (1994), and "The sage of Concord" (2003); Len Gougeon, excerpts from Virtue's Hero: Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform (1990); Russell B. Goodman, excerpts from Pragmatism: A Contemporary Reader (1995); and Cornel West, excerpts from The American Evasion of Philosophy (1989) 11) Jonathan Levin, excerpts from The Poetics of Transition: Emerson, Pragmatism, & American Literary Modernism (1999): and Randall Fuller, excerpts from Emerson's Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists (2007) 12) Branka Arsic, excerpts from On Leaving: A Reading in Emerson (2010); Branka Arsic and Cary Wolfe, eds., excerpts from The Other Emerson (2010); Johannes Voelz, excerpts from Transcendental Resistance: The New Americanists & Emerson's Challenge (2010); and Arthur S. Lothstein and Michael Brodrick, eds, excerpts from New Morning: Emerson in the Twenty-first Century (2008) |