Ralph Waldo Emerson

## Biography

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American Transcendentalist poet, philosopher and essayist during the 19th century. He was born on May 25, 1803, in Boston, Massachusetts.

In 1821, he took over as director of his brother’s school for girls.
In 1823, he wrote the poem "Good-Bye.”

He was licensed as a minister in 1826 and ordained to the Unitarian church in 1829. In 1832, he became a Transcendentalist, leading to the later essays "Self-Reliance" and "The American Scholar."

In 1829 he married Ellen Tucker, and her early death two years later lead him to a crisis of faith which caused him to resign from the clergy. In 1832 Emerson traveled to Europe, where he met with literary figures Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

In 1834, he moved to Concord, Massachusetts, and married Lydia Jackson in 1835. There he befriended Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau and Amos Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott).

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the towering figure of his era, had a religious sense of mission. Although many accused him of subverting Christianity, he explained that, for him “to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the church.” The address he delivered in 1838 at his alma mater, the Harvard Divinity School, made him unwelcome at Harvard for 30 years. In it, Emerson accused the church of acting “as if God were dead” and of emphasizing dogma while stifling the spirit.

In the 1830s Emerson gave lectures that he afterward published in essay form. These essays, particularly “Nature” (1836), embodied his newly developed philosophy. “The American Scholar,” based on a lecture that he gave in 1837, encouraged American authors to find their own style instead of imitating their foreign predecessors.

The 1840s were productive years for Emerson. He founded and co-edited the literary magazine The Dial, and he published two volumes of essays in 1841 and 1844, including “Self-Reliance,” “Friendship” and “Experience.”

During the 1850s, he vigorously supported the antislavery movement. When the American Civil War broke out, he supported the Northern cause, but the war troubled him: He was deeply appalled by the amount of violence, bloodshed, and destruction it engendered.

Emerson died in 1882 in Concord. His beliefs and his idealism were strong influences on the work of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, as well as numerous others. His writings are considered major documents of 19th-century American literature, religion and thought.

## Historical & Cultural Context

### 19th Century Progress

The nineteenth century is considered a pivotal moment in history for Western Europe and North America. While European powers continued to extend their territories across the world in a new imperialistic wave, the U.S. saw opportunities of growth to the west. This surge of expansion and progress was possible by the advantages provided by new developments. By the late 1800s, novel energy sources were being developed and new ideas and discoveries in the fields of medicine and science emerged.

### The American Civil War (1862-1865)

America’s westward expansion raised questions about what laws and customs should be followed in the West. Since the nation’s early days, the northern and southern parts of the United States had followed different ways of life. Each section wanted to extend its own way of life to the new territories and states in the West.

The North had a diversified economy, with both farms and industry. For both its factories and farms, the North depended on free workers. The South’s economy, on the other hand, was based on just a few cash crops, mainly cotton. Southern planters relied on slave labor. The economic differences between the two regions led to a conflict over slavery.

### The American Renaissance

Also called New England Renaissance, period from the 1830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War in which American literature, in the wake of the Romantic movement, came of age as an expression of a national spirit.

One of the most important influences in the period was that of the Transcendentalists centred in the village of Concord, Massachusetts, and including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, George Ripley, and Margaret Fuller. The Transcendentalists contributed to the founding of a new national culture based on native elements.

Apart from the Transcendentalists, there emerged during this period great imaginative writers—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman—whose novels and poetry left a permanent imprint on American literature. Contemporary with these writers but outside the New England circle was the Southern genius Edgar Allan Poe, who later in the century had a strong impact on European literature.

### Romanticism

The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some 20 years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing *Lyrical Ballads*. In America as in Europe, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was an important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The olidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of “the American Renaissance.”

Romantic ideas centered around art as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature, and metaphors of organic growth. Art, rather than science, Romantics argued, could best express universal truth. The Romantics underscored the importance of expressive art for the individual and society.

In his essay “The Poet” (1844), Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps the most influential writer of the Romantic era, asserts: "For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression."

The development of the self became a major theme; self-awareness, a primary method. If, according to Romantic theory, self and nature were one, self-awareness was not a selfish dead end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe. If one’s self were one with all humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human suffering. The idea of “self” — which suggested selfishness to earlier generations — was redefined. New compound words with positive meanings emerged: “self-realization,” “self-expression,” “self-reliance.”

As the unique, subjective self became important, so did the realm of psychology. Exceptional artistic effects and techniques were developed to evoke heightened psychological states. The “sublime” — an effect of beauty in grandeur (for example, a view from a mountaintop) — produced feelings of awe, reverence, vastness, and a power beyond human comprehension.

Romanticism was affirmative and appropriate for most American poets and creative essayists. America’s vast mountains, deserts, and tropics embodied the sublime. The Romantic spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values.

**Tenets:**

* Nature is viewed as a source of revelation and ultimate truth.
* Imagination was the most important creative faculty.
* Poetic works included emotional sensitivity and reverence for nature
* Emphasized the importance of individual subjectivity.

### Transcendentalism

The Transcendentalist movement was a reaction against 18th-century rationalism and a manifestation of the general humanitarian trend of 19th-century thought. The movement was based on a fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God. The doctrine of self-reliance and individualism developed through the belief in the identification of the individual soul with God.

Transcendentalism was intimately connected with Concord, a small New England village 32 kilometers west of Boston. Surrounded by forest, it was and remains a peaceful town close enough to Boston’s lectures, bookstores, and colleges to be intensely cultivated, but far enough away to be serene.

Concord was the first rural artist’s colony, and the first place to offer a spiritual and cultural alternative to American materialism. It was a place of high-minded conversation and simple living. Emerson, who moved to Concord in 1834, and Thoreau are most closely associated with the town, but the locale also attracted other writers.

The Transcendental Club was loosely organized in 1836 and included, at various times, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Channing, Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson (a leading minister), Theodore Parker (abolitionist and minister), and others.

The Transcendentalists published a quarterly magazine, *The Dial*, which lasted four years and was first edited by Margaret Fuller and later by Emerson. Reform efforts engaged them as well as literature. A number of Transcendentalists were abolitionists, and some were involved in experimental utopian communities.

Unlike many European groups, the Transcendentalists never issued a manifesto. They insisted on individual differences — on the unique viewpoint of the individual. American Transcendental Romantics pushed radical individualism to the extreme. American writers often saw themselves as lonely explorers outside society and convention.

For the Romantic American writer, nothing was a given. Literary and social conventions, far from being helpful, were dangerous. There was tremendous pressure to discover an authentic literary form, content, and voice — all at the same time. It is clear from the many masterpieces produced in the three decades before the U.S. Civil War (1861-65) that American writers rose to the challenge.

**The movement gained its impetus in America in part from meetings of a small group that came together to discuss “new thought.” The group seemed to agree that within the nature of human beings there was something that transcended human experience – an intuitive and personal revelation.**

**Name:**
Emerson explains the origin of the name this movement is known by: “It is well known to most of my audience, that the Idealism of the present day acquired the name of Transcendental, from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, of Konigsberg, who replied to the skeptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that **there was nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the experience of the senses**, by showing that **there was a very important class of ideas**, or imperative forms, **which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired**; that these were **intuitions of the mind itself**; and he denominated them **Transcendental forms**”

A los escritores trascendentalistas no les importaba tanto ir en busca de una metafísica que trascendiera sus vidas diarias sino más bien encontrar una nueva visión de la mente que reemplazara el modelo empirista, materialista, y pasivo de Locke y enfatizara en cambio el activo rol de la mente en darle forma a la experiencia.

**Tenets:**

* Transcendentalists believed in living close to nature and taught the dignity of manual labor.
* They strongly felt the need of intellectual companionships and emphasized spiritual living.
* Every person’s relation to God was to be established directly by the individual rather than through a ritualistic church.
* Self-trust and self-reliance were to be practiced at all times, because to trust self was really to trust the voice of God speaking intuitively within us. The transcendentalists believed in democracy and individualism.
* Most transcendentalists were by nature reformers; and most reforms were attempts to regenerate the human spirit rather than to prescribe particular movements.

## Bibliography

In his essay “Self-Reliance,” Emerson remarks: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Yet he is remarkably consistent in his call for the birth of American individualism inspired by nature. Most of his major ideas — the need for a new national vision, the use of personal experience, the notion of the cosmic Over-Soul, and the doctrine of compensation — are suggested in his first publication, *Nature* (1836).

## *The American Scholar*

On August 31, 1837, Emerson delivered a commencement address to Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa society, a speech that eventually became known as “The American Scholar.” Emerson’s audience that day included not only the graduates but many of the faculty.

Immediately published as *An Oration, Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837*, the lecture was first titled “The American Scholar” when it appeared in Emerson’s 1849 collection, *NATURE: Addresses and Lectures*.

Emerson’s main theme in the speech was to urge Americans to break from European tradition and dependency on “the mind of the Past” and to look around at the present unique circumstances of America for intellectual inspiration. Placing the “American Scholar” in the specific context of American political, social, and economic institutions —democracy and capitalism —Emerson argued “Life is our dictionary” and “the way to learn grammar” was to talk with working men and women about their lives. He posited that, here in the everyday is where true knowledge and inspiration could be found as, indeed, “Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.”

While not going so far in terms of democratizing American culture by placing Harvard scholars in the same class as men of the “trades and manufactures,” some of Emerson’s own teachers, such as Edward Everett, for example, had previously made similar arguments about breaking from the European tradition and promoting American culture.

The theme was one which in 1837 particularly engaged Emerson as a Transcendentalist as intellectual culture at that time still emphasized ideas to be drawn from European thinkers and had not done much toward applying those ideas to development of American thought and culture. At the time of his speech many of his Transcendentalist colleagues were hard at work on translations of French and German philosophers.

“The American Scholar” is most forceful, however, as a call not just to an elevation of American literary culture in general, which Emerson was increasingly discouraged at not finding, but to the development of the American individual as thinker and scholar. He sought for his fellow Americans freedom not just from a European-dominated education but from the institution of education itself. In this speech Emerson articulated the idea of “Man Thinking,” a state of being rather than a profession, and urged his listeners to aspire not solely to be “bookworms,” members of a “booklearned class,” but to think and process what they read as it relates to their own lives; to engage in
“creative reading, as well as creative writing.” Even more radical, he urged them to break from reliance not only on European thought, but on books in general, from too much studying: “Books are for the scholar’s idle times.” He urged his listeners or readers to rely upon themselves as the true source of knowledge and to read to learn about themselves, reminding them that “Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.”

### Paragraphs 1-7 - Man Thinking

Emerson opens "The American Scholar" with greetings to the college president and members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College. Pointing out the differences between this gathering and the athletic and dramatic contests of ancient Greece, the poetry contests of the Middle Ages, and the scientific academies of nineteenth-century Europe, he voices a theme that draws the entire essay together: the notion of an independent American intelligentsia that will no longer depend for authority on its European past. He sounds what one critic contends is "the first clarion of an American literary renaissance," a call for Americans to seek their creative inspirations using America as their source, much like Walt Whitman would do in Leaves of Grass eighteen years later. In the second paragraph, Emerson announces his theme as "The American Scholar" not a particular individual but an abstract ideal.

The remaining five paragraphs relate an allegory that underlies the discussion to follow. According to an ancient fable, there was once only "One Man," who then was divided into many men so that society could work more efficiently. Ideally, society labors together — each person doing his or her task — so that it can function properly. However, society has now subdivided to so great an extent that it no longer serves the good of its citizens. And the scholar, being a part of society, has degenerated also. Formerly a "Man Thinking," the scholar is now "a mere thinker," a problem that Emerson hopes to correct successfully by re-familiarizing his audience with how the true scholar is educated and what the duties of this scholar are.

### Paragraphs 8-9 - The Influence of Nature

In these two paragraphs comprising the first section on how a scholar should be educated, Emerson envisions nature as a teacher that instructs individuals who observe the natural world to see — eventually — how similar their minds and nature are. The first similarity he discusses concerns the notion of circular power — a theme familiar to readers of the Nature essay — found in nature and in the scholar's spirit. Both nature and the scholar's spirit, "whose beginning, whose ending he never can find — so entire, so boundless," are eternal.

Order is another similarity — as it is in Nature — between the scholar and nature. At first, the mind views a chaotic and infinite reality of individual facts, but then it begins to classify these facts into categories, to make comparisons and distinctions. A person discovers nature's laws and can understand them because they are similar to the operations of the intellect. Eventually, we realize that nature and the soul — both proceeding from what Emerson terms "one root" — are parallel structures that mirror each other (Emerson's term for "parallel" may be misleading; he says that nature is the "opposite" of the soul). So, a greater knowledge of nature results in a greater understanding of the self, and vice versa. The maxims "Know thyself" and "Study nature" are equivalent: They are two ways of saying the same thing.

### Paragraphs 10-20 - The Influence of the Past

Emerson devotes much of his discussion to the second influence on the mind, past learning — or, as he expresses it, the influence of books. In the first three paragraphs of this section, he emphasizes that books contain the learning of the past; however, he also says that these books pose a great danger. While it is true that books transform mere facts ("short-lived actions") into vital truths ("immortal thoughts"), every book is inevitably a partial truth, biased by society's standards when it was written. Each age must create its own books and find its own truths for itself.

Following this call for each age's creating truth, Emerson dwells on other dangers in books. They are dangerous, he says, because they tempt the scholar away from original thought. Excessive respect for the brilliance of past thinkers can discourage us from exploring new ideas and seeking individualized truths.

The worst example of slavish deference to past thinkers is the bookworm, a pedant who focuses all thought on trivial matters of scholarship and ignores large, universal ideas. This type of person becomes passive and uncreative, and is the antithesis of Emerson's ideal of the creative imagination: "Man hopes. Genius creates. To create, — to create, — is the proof of a divine presence." The non-creative bookworm is more spiritually distanced from God — and, therefore, from nature — than is the thinker of original thoughts.

But the genius, too, can suffer from the undue influence of books. Emerson's example of this kind of sufferer are the English dramatic poets, who, he says, have been "Shakespearized" for two hundred years: Rather than producing new, original texts and thoughts, they mimic Shakespeare's writings. Citing an Arabic proverb that says that one fig tree fertilizes another — just like one author can inspire another — Emerson suggests that true scholars should resort to books only when their own creative genius dries up or is blocked.

The last three paragraphs of this section refer to the pleasures and benefits of reading, provided it is done correctly. There is a unique pleasure in reading. Because ancient authors thought and felt as people do today, books defeat time, a phenomenon that Emerson argues is evidence of the transcendental oneness of human minds. Qualifying his previous insistence on individual creation, he says that he never underestimates the written word: Great thinkers are nourished by any knowledge, even that in books, although it takes a remarkably independent mind to read critically at all times. This kind of reading mines the essential vein of truth in an author while discarding the trivial or biased.

Emerson concedes that there are certain kinds of reading that are essential to an educated person: History, science, and similar subjects, which must be acquired by laborious reading and study. Foremost, schools must foster creativity rather than rely on rote memorization of texts: ". . . [schools] can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create."

### Paragraphs 21-30 - The Influence of Action

In this third section, Emerson comments on the scholar's need for action, for physical labor. He rejects the notion that the scholar should not engage in practical action. Action, while secondary to thought, is still necessary: "Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential." Furthermore, not to act — declining to put principle into practice — is cowardly. The transcendental concept of the world as an expression of ourselves makes action the natural duty of a thinking person.

Emerson observes the difference between recent actions and past actions. Over time, he says, a person's past deeds are transformed into thought, but recent acts are too entangled with present feelings to undergo this transformation. He compares "the recent act" to an insect larva, which eventually metamorphoses into a butterfly — symbolic of action becoming thought.

Finally, he praises labor as valuable in and of itself, for such action is the material creatively used by the scholar. An active person has a richer existence than a scholar who merely undergoes a second-hand existence through the words and thoughts of others. The ideal life has "undulation" — a rhythm that balances, or alternates, thought and action, labor and contemplation: "A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think." This cycle creates a person's character that is far superior to the fame or the honor too easily expected by a mere display of higher learning.

### Paragraphs 31-45 - The Scholar's Duties

After Emerson has discussed how nature, books, and action educate the scholar, he now addresses the scholar's obligations to society. First, he considers these obligations in general, abstract terms; then he relates them to the particular situation of the American scholar.

The scholar's first and most important duty is to develop unflinching self-trust and a mind that will be a repository of wisdom for other people. This is a difficult task, Emerson says, because the scholar must endure poverty, hardship, tedium, solitude, and other privations while following the path of knowledge. Self-sacrifice is often called for, as demonstrated in Emerson's examples of two astronomers who spent many hours in tedious and solitary observation of space in order to make discoveries that benefited mankind. Many readers will wonder just how satisfying the reward really is when Emerson acknowledges that the scholar "is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature."

The true scholar is dedicated to preserving the wisdom of the past and is obligated to communicating the noblest thoughts and feelings to the public. This last duty means that the scholar — "who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public illustrious thoughts" — must always remain independent in thinking and judgment, regardless of popular opinion, fad, notoriety, or expediency. Because the scholar discovers universal ideas, those held by the universal human mind, he can communicate with people of all classes and ages: "He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart."

Although he appears to lead a reclusive and benign life, the scholar must be brave because he deals in ideas, a dangerous currency. Self-trust is the source of courage and can be traced to the transcendental conviction that the true thinker sees all thought as one; universal truth is present in all people, although not all people are aware of it. Instead of thinking individually, we live vicariously through our heroes; we seek self-worth through others when we should search for it in ourselves. The noblest ambition is to improve human nature by fulfilling our individual natures.

Emerson concludes the essay by observing that different ages in Western civilization, which he terms the Classic, the Romantic, and the Reflective (or the Philosophical) periods, have been characterized by different dominant ideas, and he acknowledges that he has neglected speaking about the importance of differences between ages while speaking perhaps too fervently about the transcendental unity of all human thought.

Emerson now proposes an evolutionary development of civilization, comparable to the development of a person from childhood to adulthood. The present age — the first half of the 1800s — is an age of criticism, especially self-criticism. Although some people find such criticism to be an inferior philosophy, Emerson believes that it is valid and important. Initiating a series of questions, he asks whether discontent with the quality of current thought and literature is such a bad thing; he answers that it is not. Dissatisfaction, he says, marks a transitional period of growth and evolution into new knowledge: "If there is any period one would desire to be born in,is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; . . . This [present] time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it."

Emerson applauds the views of English and German romantic poets like Wordsworth and Goethe, who find inspiration and nobility in the lives and work of common people. Instead of regarding only royal and aristocratic subjects as appropriate for great and philosophical literature, the Romantic writers reveal the poetry and sublimity in the lives of lower-class and working people. Their writing is full of life and vitality, and it exemplifies the transcendental doctrine of the unity of all people. Ironically, we should remember that at the beginning of the essay, Emerson advocated Americans' throwing off the European mantle that cloaks their own culture. Here, he distinguishes between a European tradition that celebrates the lives of common people, and one that celebrates only the monarchical rule of nations: "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe."

Making special reference to the Swedish philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, Emerson contends that although Swedenborg has not received his due recognition, he revealed the essential connection between the human mind and the natural world, the fundamental oneness of humans and nature. Emerson finds much inspiration for his own thinking and writing in the doctrines of Swedenborg.

In his long, concluding paragraph, Emerson dwells on the romantic ideal of the individual. This fundamentally American concept, which he develops at much greater length in the essay "Self-Reliance," is America's major contribution to the world of ideas. The scholar must be independent, courageous, and original; in thinking and acting, the scholar must demonstrate that America is not the timid society it is assumed to be. We must refuse to be mere purveyors of the past's wisdom: ". . . this confidence in the unsearched might of man, belongs by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar," who will create a native, truly American culture.

### Transcendentalist Tenets in “The American Scholar”

* Transcendentalists believed in living close to nature and taught the dignity of manual labor.

"The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature." (par. 8)

"When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion." (par. 19)

"the law of nature [is] the law of spirit" (par. 27)

"There is virtue ... in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work." (par. 29)

"The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims." (par. 34)

"Instead of the sublime and beautiful; the near, the low, the common, was explored and poetized." (par. 44)

"Man is surprised to find that things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote." (par. 45)

* They strongly felt the need of intellectual companionships and emphasized spiritual living.

"when [the American scholar] has learned to worship the soul, ... he shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator" (par. 9)

"The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him" (par. 15)

"The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates." (par. 15)

* Every person’s relation to God was to be established directly by the individual rather than through a ritualistic church.

"When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings." (par. 17)

"The world ... lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself." (par. 22)

* Self-trust and self-reliance were to be practiced at all times, because to trust self was really to trust the voice of God speaking intuitively within us. The transcendentalists believed in democracy and individualism.

"In the divided or social state, these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his." (par. 4)

"the individual ... must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers." (par. 4)

"Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments" (par. 9)

"'Know thyself,' and the modern precept, 'Study nature,' become at last one maxim." (par. 9)

"In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended." (par. 33)

"Free should the scholar be, — free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom, 'without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution.'" (par. 33)

"The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature" (par. 47)

* Most transcendentalists were by nature reformers; and most reforms were attempts to regenerate the human spirit rather than to prescribe particular movements.

"Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing." (par. 20)

"Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth." (par. 21)

"The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power." (par. 22)

"he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom." (par. 25)

"When the artist has exhausted his materials ... he has always the resource to live." (par. 28)

"A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think." (par. 28)

"Time shall teach him, that the scholar loses no hour which the man lives." (par. 28)

"He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history." (par. 31)

"He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated." (par. 32) [The more individuals get to know about their natural surroundings, the more power they will they have to be the masters of their own destiny]

"The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges." (par. 47)

"A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men" (par.47)

## Intro Paragraph

Recently independent and still receiving a prominent flux of immigrants in need, the American society saw the future with hope and optimism during the 19th century. At the same time, the interest of the individuals had shifted from strictly religious topics to more secular, every-day events, searching the truth often times through reasoning rather than on the Bible. As these events were taking place, a young America welcomed the influences of one of the most defining literary movements spread in Western Europe: Romanticism. However, this wave took a different form within American Literature and emerged as what was known as Transcendentalism. While American writers drew inspiration from nature and exalted the concept of intuition much like their European counterparts, the hope presented in their developing nation allowed them to see human beings' conditionbeings condition from a much more positive perspective. Transcendentalists deemed the individual as the center of the movement, focusing on the possibility of progress and evolution throughout hard work a pure connection with the self and nature. One of the main leaders of this movement and the mythical Transcendentalist Group was Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), a poet and philosopher whose works earned him a spot among the greatest American writers. Through Emerson’s speech “The American Scholar”, first pronounced in Harvard in 1937, the audience comes across the main tenets of the Transcendentalist movement as the author describes the characteristics not only of the perfect American Scholar but also of the perfect American Society. “The American Scholar” positions itself as key Transcendentalist piece then thanks to its exploration of the Oversoul and the importance of the evolution of the individual.

Ideas/Tenets of Transcendentalism:

Body 1) Connection with nature and spiritual living, the laws of nature, direct relation with God through nature rather than clergy or scripture

Body 2) Individualism, self-improvement, self-trust, self-reliance, reform as an attempt to regenerate the human spirit, the duties of the scholar, Man Thinking vs Man thinker

### MLA citation

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "The American Scholar." Phi Beta Kappa Society Oration, 31 August, 1837, Cambridge University.

## Sources

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3  VanSpanckeren, Kathryn. *Outline of American Literature*. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Information Agency, 1994. Print.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1  Mussetta, Mariana and Andrea Vartalitis. *El Artista de los Bello*. Eduvim, 2012.
3. ↑  Wayne, Tiffany. *Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism*. Facts On File, 2006.