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." |
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Page 3
... light is the first of painters . There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful . And the stimulus it affords to the sense , and a sort of infinitude which it hath , like space and time , make all matter gay ...
... light is the first of painters . There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful . And the stimulus it affords to the sense , and a sort of infinitude which it hath , like space and time , make all matter gay ...
Page 49
... light of forms . " It is properly not in the form , but in the mind . It instantly deserts possession , and flies to an object in the horizon . If I could put my hand on the North Star , would it be as beautiful ? The sea is lovely ...
... light of forms . " It is properly not in the form , but in the mind . It instantly deserts possession , and flies to an object in the horizon . If I could put my hand on the North Star , would it be as beautiful ? The sea is lovely ...
Page 63
... light appears , and is the distinction , the principle , we wanted . But the oracle comes be- cause we had previously laid siege to the shrine . It seems as if the law of the intellect resembled that law of nature by which we now ...
... light appears , and is the distinction , the principle , we wanted . But the oracle comes be- cause we had previously laid siege to the shrine . It seems as if the law of the intellect resembled that law of nature by which we now ...
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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