Ralph Waldo Emerson



Ralph Waldo Emerson

Although he wrote no fiction and less poetry than many other poets, Ralph Waldo Emerson is perhaps the most important figure in the history of American literature.  As a writer of essays and lectures, he was a master stylist, renowned for the clarity and rhythms of his prose.  Several of his essays--notably Nature, "Self-Reliance," and "The American Scholar"--are among the finest in English.  Among the principles that Emerson eloquently addressed in these and other works are the individual's unity with nature, the sanctity of the individual, the need to live in the present, and the role of the poet in society.

Emerson's chief contribution to American letters, however, came in the form of his enormous influence on other writers and thinkers.  In the 1830s, for example, he became a leader of American Transcendentalism--a philosophical, literary, and social movement--and so influenced Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau. Emerson and Transcendentalism even shaped the ideas of non-adherents, such as Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe, who defined their own philosophical and aesthetic principles partly by criticizing the Transcendentalists.

Emerson's ideas about poetry--perhaps in particular his contention that "it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem" in the essay "The Poet"--also profoundly influenced Walt Whitman.  Indeed, Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass reiterates many of the same principles expressed in The Poet, including the role of the poet as voice of the people. Whitman also owed much of his recognition to Emerson, whose praise of Leaves of Grass--"I greet you at the beginning of a great career… "I find incomparable things said incomparably well."--Whitman printed on the back of the books.

Finally, Emerson's insistence that humans live in the present and trust their own impulses helped American writers forge their own identities at a time when European influence was still high and American confidence perhaps was still low.  After hearing Emerson deliver address called The American Scholar to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard in 1837, fellow writer Oliver Wendell Holmes called the speech "our intellectual Declaration of Independence."

Reading Comprehension Check

1. How is The American Scholar “our intellectual Declaration of Independence”?

2. In “Self-Reliance,” at what conviction does Emerson say that all people arrive during their education?

3. In “Self-Reliance,” what two fears does Emerson identify as those that stop people from trusting themselves?

4. According to Emerson’s Nature, to what do people return when they enter nature?

5. In Nature, what does Emerson say is the greatest delight that nature ministers?

6. In Nature, in what way does Emerson say that nature can change on the basis of people’s moods?

Draw Conclusions

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. . . .

7. According to Emerson, what is a “great man”? Circle textual evidence that supports your response from throughout the paragraph and then write your response in a complete sentence with quotes.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right. Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both.

8. According to Emerson, what is the connection between man and nature? Circle textual evidence that supports your response from throughout the paragraph and then write your response in a complete sentence with quotes.

Identify Elements of Transcendentalism

9. Which of the basic tenets of Transcendentalism does “Self-Reliance” best represent?

10. Which element of Transcendentalism does Nature best represent?

Synthesize Ideas

11. Emerson’s motto “Trust thyself ” is communicated in “Self-Reliance” as the idea that:

12. Emerson’s motto “Trust thyself ” is communicated in Nature by the idea that:

Evaluate Aphorisms

From each selection, choose a brief statement about life that has the most meaning for you. Explain your choices.

13. “Self-Reliance”:

14. Nature:

Henry David Thoreau

Born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau did not enjoy the advantages of a well-to-do family, but he worked his way through Harvard, graduating in 1837.  After a brief career in education, he spent the years between 1841 and 1843 doing odd jobs for Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family, with whom he resided.  In 1845, he moved to a hut on Walden Pond and spent two years growing food and thinking.  The book that he would base on this experience, however, did not appear until 1854.  Walden; or, Life in the Woods, though far from a sensation in its own time, has come to be regarded as one of the classics of American literature.  Indeed, it may be the only one of Thoreau’s works familiar to many Americans.  Its author, however, produced a number of other notable works, including A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), The Maine Woods (1864), and “Resistance to Civil Government,” also published under the title “Civil Disobedience” (1849), before his death from tuberculosis in 1862.

Along with Emerson, Thoreau was one of the great Transcendentalists and espoused some of the ideas associated with this movement.  Works such as “Resistance to Civil Government,” for example, demonstrate the value he placed both on nature and the individual.  Perhaps more than Emerson, however, Thoreau was a social activist, particularly in the area of abolition.  For this reason, along with his willingness to immerse himself in nature at Walden Pond, we might think of him as “Transcendentalism in Action.”   Like Emerson, too, Thoreau was a master prose stylist and wrote a number of sentences that have endured for more than a century.  Indeed, along with Emerson, Mark Twain, and Benjamin Franklin, he is one of the most widely quoted American writers.

Reading Check

1. Summarize Thoreau’s reasons for moving to the woods.

2. What does Thoreau want to spend his time trying to understand, and how does he plan to achieve this understanding?

3. Summarize Thoreau’s reasons for leaving the woods.

Text Analysis

4. Diction Review (Craft and Structure)

5. Concept Connection Activity (Textual Evidence)

Make Inferences

6. Being in nature is important to Thoreau because:

Analyze the Essay

7. Write one example of figurative language that Thoreau uses in Walden. Tell what you think his use of figurative language adds to the essay.

Analyze Transcendentalism

8. One similarity between Walden and Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” is:

Evaluate Ideas

9. Summarize Thoreau’s ideas about poverty. Then explain your opinion of his ideas.

Compare Texts

10. Circle one of the phrases in parentheses and then complete the sentence.

I think it (would not be challenging/would be challenging) for a modern American to live as Thoreau did because:

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Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain. (CCSS: RSIT #1)

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text. (CCSS: RSIT #4)

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