Emerson's Literary CriticismRalph Waldo Emerson has always fascinated students of criticism and of American literature and thought. Emerson& ’ s Literary Criticism supplies the continuing need for an anthology. This collection brings together Emerson& ’ s literary criticism from a wide variety of sources. Eric W. Carlson has culled both the major statements of Emerson's critical principles and many secondary observations that illuminate them. Here are more than sixty selections on thirty-five critical topics. Headnotes provide valuable background. Carlson relates Emerson& ’ s critical principles to his philosophy, social thought, and literary milieu, and also to biographical details. Intended for the student as well as the researcher, this book amply illustrates Alfred Kazin's contention that Ralph Waldo Emerson was "one of the shrewdest critics who ever lived." |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 49
Page 119
... common history of genius . He was content to fall into the track of vulgar poets and spend on common aims his splendid endowments , and has declined the office proffered to now and then a man in many centuries in the power of his genius ...
... common history of genius . He was content to fall into the track of vulgar poets and spend on common aims his splendid endowments , and has declined the office proffered to now and then a man in many centuries in the power of his genius ...
Page 136
... common sense inspired ; or iron raised to white heat . The marriage of the two qualities is in their speech . It is a tacit rule of the language to make the frame or skeleton of Saxon words , and , when elevation or ornament is sought ...
... common sense inspired ; or iron raised to white heat . The marriage of the two qualities is in their speech . It is a tacit rule of the language to make the frame or skeleton of Saxon words , and , when elevation or ornament is sought ...
Page 187
... common sense , reform , nature — and the melody and dialect of Burns's songs . As general - essay criticism , this is Emerson almost at his best . " His was the music to whose tone The common pulse of man keeps time In cot or castle's ...
... common sense , reform , nature — and the melody and dialect of Burns's songs . As general - essay criticism , this is Emerson almost at his best . " His was the music to whose tone The common pulse of man keeps time In cot or castle's ...
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
American artist Bacon bard beauty better Boccacio Byron Carlyle character Chaucer Coleridge creative culture Dares Phrygius delight divine Edited England English English Traits epic essay experience expression F. O. Matthiessen fact feeling Forceythe Willson genius Goethe Harold Bloom Hawthorne heart heaven Heraclitus Homer human ideal ideas imagination insight inspiration intellect Jakob Böhme journal language lecture Literary Criticism literature lyric M. H. Abrams merit Milton mind modern moral nature never novel object organic Orphism painting passage perception person philosopher picture Plato Plutarch poems poet poetic poetry praise prose Ralph Waldo Emerson reader rhetoric rhyme romantic Scott seems sense sentence sentiment Shakspeare soul speak speech spirit style Swedenborg symbol talent taste Tennyson theory things Thoreau thou thought tion tone Traits transcendental translation truth universal verse whilst Whitman wonderful words Wordsworth write