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 xviii
... spirit , Emerson conceives of spirit as flowing out of the matter which it has vitalized in the moment of creation . " 18 The material object is only of tempo- rary value in objectifying the poet's spiritual intuition ; as the spirit ...
... spirit , Emerson conceives of spirit as flowing out of the matter which it has vitalized in the moment of creation . " 18 The material object is only of tempo- rary value in objectifying the poet's spiritual intuition ; as the spirit ...
Page xxiii
... Spirit will flow freely ( " the currents ... circulate " ) through the receptive Self . Six years later Emerson felt ... spirit and a fact , a north and a south . Spirit is the positive , the event is the negative . Will is the north ...
... Spirit will flow freely ( " the currents ... circulate " ) through the receptive Self . Six years later Emerson felt ... spirit and a fact , a north and a south . Spirit is the positive , the event is the negative . Will is the north ...
Page 103
... spirit of place , " as D. H. Lawrence called it , and the spirit of the times , Emerson also , and not inconsistently , viewed great art as experientially timeless or universal . Criticism at its highest level must be transcendental ...
... spirit of place , " as D. H. Lawrence called it , and the spirit of the times , Emerson also , and not inconsistently , viewed great art as experientially timeless or universal . Criticism at its highest level must be transcendental ...
Contents
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS | ix |
Beauty 1836 | 23 |
Beauty 1860 | 45 |
Copyright | |
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American Literature American Renaissance artist Bacon beauty better 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 lyric M. H. Abrams 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 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