Emerson's Essays

EMERSON'S ESSAYS

EMERSON'S ESSAYS. The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), published in two series (1841 and 1844), were only part of a career-long infatuation with the essay form, beginning with Nature in 1836 and ending with the collection Society and Solitude in 1870. Stylistically, the two series of Essays epitomize the Emersonian corpus. Characterized by a prophetic yet accessible tone, replete with the arresting image and the memorable aphorism, rich in varying perspectives (within single essays, and sometimes to a dizzying degree), the essays also sustain a speech-like, rhetorical mood, perhaps because some of the pieces were derived from earlier orations. The subject matter of the essays is varied, but they provide a digest of typical Transcendentalist themes. Individuality, nonconformity, and intellectual independence are advocated; the striving for a harmonious relationship between man and nature is a constant motif; and an optimistic belief in the perfectibility of humanity is espoused.

Despite a degree of contemporary puzzlement, and notwithstanding uneasy reactions from writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, the impact of these Essays, the most notable of which include "Self Reliance," "The Poet," and "The Over-Soul," has been profound. Philosophers such as William James, John Dewey, and Friedrich Nietzsche stand in Emerson's debt, but, above all, it is American writers who have rallied to Emerson's call—expressed, for instance, in "The Poet" (Second Series)—to forge a uniquely American literature, freed from what Emerson perceived as the shackles of the European literary tradition. Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, and preeminently Walt Whitman, who faithfully sustained an Emersonian belief in the power of the poetic idiom, were all deeply influenced by this ambition. It ought not to be forgotten, however, that, beyond the influence of the Essays on sophisticated poetic and philosophical discourse, they also represent a unique artifact in the broader American culture as that rarest of things—a much-loved and endlessly quoted book.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Atwan, Robert. "'Ecstasy and Eloquence': The Method of Emerson's Essays. " In Essays on the Essay: Redefining the Genre. Edited by Alexander Butrym. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989.

Porte, Joel, and Saundra Morris, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Jonathan A. Wright

See also Transcendentalism .