Ralph Waldo Emerson summary

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Ralph Waldo Emerson, lithograph by Leopold Grozelier, 1859

Ralph Waldo Emerson, (born May 25, 1803, Boston, Mass., U.S.—died April 27, 1882, Concord), U.S. poet, essayist, and lecturer. Emerson graduated from Harvard University and was ordained a Unitarian minister in 1829. His questioning of traditional doctrine led him to resign the ministry three years later. He formulated his philosophy in Nature (1836); the book helped initiate New England Transcendentalism, a movement of which he soon became the leading exponent. In 1834 he moved to Concord, Mass., the home of his friend Henry David Thoreau. His lectures on the proper role of the scholar and the waning of the Christian tradition caused considerable controversy. In 1840, with Margaret Fuller, he helped launch The Dial, a journal that provided an outlet for Transcendentalist ideas. He became internationally famous with his Essays (1841, 1844), including “Self-Reliance.” Representative Men (1850) consists of biographies of historical figures. The Conduct of Life (1860), his most mature work, reveals a developed humanism and a full awareness of human limitations. His Poems (1847) and May-Day (1867) established his reputation as a major poet.

essay Summary

Essay, an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and formal than a dissertation or thesis and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view. Some early treatises—such as those of Cicero on the

poetry Summary

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and

biography Summary

Biography, form of literature, commonly considered nonfictional, the subject of which is the life of an individual. One of the oldest forms of literary expression, it seeks to re-create in words the life of a human being—as understood from the historical or personal perspective of the author—by