Title: Representative men. Nature : addresses and lectures.
Authors: Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin,
Year: 1883
Abstract: Representative Men contains seven essays, the first of which discusses the role great men play in society. The remaining six essays extoll the virtues of six men whom Emerson deemed great: Plato, Emanuel Swedenborg, Michel de Montaigne, William Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Nature contains the essence of Emerson's transcendental philosophy in which the world of phenomena is seen as symbolic of the inner life, and individual freedom and self-reliance are emphasized. Emerson's addresses apply his doctrine to scholars, clergymen, and others.
Contents: v. 1 Representative men. Uses of great men ; Plato; or, the philosopher, Plato: new readings ; Swedenborg; or, the mystic ; Montaigne; or, the skeptic ; Shakspeare; or, the poet ; Napoleon; or, the man of the world ; Goethe: or, the writer -- v. 2. Nature, addresses and lectures. Nature ; The American scholar, an oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, Aug. 31, 1837 ; An address delivered before the senior class in divinity college, Cambridge, July 15, 1838 ; Literary ethics, an oration delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 ; The method of nature, an oration delivered before the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, August 11, 1841 ; Man the reformer, a lecture read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library Association, Boston, January 25, 1841 ; Lecture on the times, read in the Masonic Temple, Boston, December 2, 1841 ; The conservative, a lecture read in the Masonic Temple, Boston, December 9, 1841 ; The transcendentalist, a lecture read in the Masonic Temple, Boston, January, 1842 ; The young American, a lecture read before the Mercantile Library Association, in Boston, February 7, 1844.