1. Monday, September 13, 2010

2.  1)Why does Emerson’s book “Nature” Chapter 1 have no title?  2) In what way are “Nature” and “The American Scholar” similar?  3) Why does Emerson in “Nature” give us questions but never answers them?  4) Why does it feel like “The Transcendentalist“ Emerson is giving up?  5) Why would Buell think it is so important to put “The Transcendentalist” in part II?

3.  On September 8, 1836, the day before the publication of Nature, Emerson met with Henry Hedge, George Putnam and George Ripley to plan periodic gatherings of other like-minded intellectuals. This was the beginning of the Transcendental Club, which served as a center for the movement. Its first official meeting was held on September 19, 1836.

4.  “Standing on the bare ground, --my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,-- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God” (“Nature” I).

5. "Transparent Eyeball" caricature of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Christopher Cranch, (drawn sometime between 1836 and 1846)

6.  What can we learn about him from his TONE:  Diffident (reserved), diaphanous (delicate or vague), even impersonal  Genteel, refined, contemplative  Edward Waldo on his father’s writing: Autobiographical “incidents are generalized and personality merged in a type”  How does Emerson seem to design his essays to increase or decrease the “illusion of autobiography”?”

7. “I went to Walden Pond this evening a little before sunset, and in the tranquil landscape I behold somewhat as beautiful as my own nature” ( Journal, August 12 th 1836) “In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature” (“Nature”)

8.  Emerson’s use of the first person, not a single entity but made up of two different personal forms: - the voice of private feeling or opinion (Emerson, the speaker, is separate from his audience, aware of possible disagreements or misunderstandings, making it necessary for him to confess or pontificate - -the exemplary or representative persona (the transcendental “I”): take what I say not as opinion, but as an axiom. Emerson is speaking according to an informing spirit, rather than as an individual (Buell Literary Transcendentalism 289).

9.  How can we account for the differences in Emerson’s approach to explaining Transcendentalism in “The American Scholar” (1837) as opposed to “The Transcendentalist” (1841)?  Are Emerson and the Transcendentalists anti- modern?