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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Sunshine was he
In the winter day; And in the midsummer Coolness and shade." |
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Commentary and Criticism
"Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must, -- when the sun is hid, and the stars withdraw their shining, -- we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is. We hear, that we may speak. The Arabian proverb says, 'A fig tree, looking on a fig tree, becometh fruitful.'"
"The American Scholar"
It is a good place to start, since so much of contemporary criticism works to either bolster or overcome this representative reading.
Two Bibliographies of Works About Emerson:
- Introductions: the author and his thought
- Selected Research and Scholarship: some new views
- A more general bibliography
1. Where to start reading about Emerson
- Robert Richardson, Emerson: The Mind on Fire
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
An exciting and intimate biography of Emerson
- Michael Lopez, Emerson and Power: Creative Antagonism in the Nineteenth Century.
DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996.
The state of the scholarship reviewed and revised.
2. A selected bibliography of research and scholarship.
- Arvin, Newton Brooks. “The House of Pain: Emerson and the Tragic Sense.”
in American Pantheon. New York: Delacorte, 1966. Reprinted from Hudson Review, Vol. XII, No. 1, Spring 1959.
- Bloom, Harold, ed. Emerson: Modern Critical Views. “Introduction.”
New York: Chelsea House, 1985.
- Cavell, Stanley. This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures After Emerson After Wittgenstein.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
- Dewey, John. “Ralph Waldo Emerson”
in Characters and Events; Popular Essays in Social and Political Philosophy. Edited by Joseph Ratner. New York, Octagon Books, 1970 [c1929]
- Kateb, George. The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.
Emerson and Self-Reliance.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995.
- Porte, Joel and Saundra Morris, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
