Approaches To Teaching The Works Of Ralph Waldo Emerson

A leader of the transcendentalist movement and one of the country's first public intellectuals, Ralph Waldo Emerson has been a long-standing presence in American literature courses. Today he is remembered for his essays, but in the nineteenth century he was also known as a poet and orator who engaged with issues such as religion, nature, education, and abolition. This volume presents strategies for placing Emerson in the context of his time, for illuminating his rhetorical techniques, and for tracing his influence into the present day and around the world. Part 1, "Materials," offers guidance for selecting classroom editions and information on Emerson's life, contexts, and reception. Part 2, "Approaches," provides suggestions for teaching Emerson's works in a variety of courses, not only literature but also creative writing, religion, digital humanities, media studies, and environmental studies. The essays in this section address Emerson's most frequently anthologized works, such as Nature and "Self-Reliance," along with other texts including sermons, lectures, journals, and poems.

In his 1837 speech "The American Scholar," Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, "life is our dictionary," encapsulating a body of work that reached well beyond the American 19th century. This comprehensive study explores Emerson as a preacher, poet, philosopher, lecturer, essayist and editor. There are nearly 100 entries on individual texts and their personal, historical and literary contexts. Emerson's work is placed within his relationships with family members, fellow Transcendentalists and transatlantic friends, and his commitment to ethics, self-culture and social change. This book provides the fullest possible exploration of Emerson's writing and philosophy. Far ahead of his own time, the man enthusiastically questioned institutions, communities, friendships, history, individuality and contemporaneous approaches to environmental stewardship.

The full texts of four seminal works by Emerson are presented in this volume: 'Nature, ' 'The American Scholar, ' 'The Divinity School Address, ' and 'The Transcendentalist.' Edward Ericson assesses that impact in his helpful introduction and evaluates anew Emerson's continuing influence on American culture in our century.

A cosmopolitan author who spent nearly a decade in Europe and was versed in the works of his British and French contemporaries, James Fenimore Cooper was also deeply concerned with the America of his day and its history. His works embrace themes that have dominated American literature since: the frontier; the oppression of Native Americans by Europeans; questions of race, gender, and class; and rugged individualism, as represented by figures like the pirate, the spy, the hunter, and the settler. His most memorable character, Natty Bumppo, has entered into American popular culture. The essays in this volume offer students bridges to Cooper's novels, which grapple with complex moral issues that are still crucial today. Engaging with film adaptations, cross-culturalism, animal studies, media history, environmentalism, and Indigenous American poetics, the essays offer new ways to bring these novels to life in the classroom.

A trailblazing modernist, Gertrude Stein studied psychology at Radcliffe with William James and went on to train as a medical doctor before coming out as a lesbian and moving to Paris, where she collected contemporary art and wrote poetry, novels, and libretti. Known as a writer's writer, she has influenced every generation of American writers since her death in 1946 and remains avant-garde. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," provides information and resources that will help teachers and students begin and pursue their study of Stein. The essays of part 2, "Approaches," introduce major topics to be covered in the classroom--race, gender, feminism, sexuality, narrative form, identity, and Stein's experimentation with genre--in a wide range of contexts, including literary analysis, art history, first-year composition, and cultural studies.

Reading poetry and prose, images and art, literary and critical theory, science and cultural studies, Close Reading the Anthropocene explores the question of meaning, its importance and immanent potential for loss, in the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene. Both close reading and scientific ecology prioritize slowing down and looking around to apprehend similarities and differences, to recognize and value interconnections. Here "close" suggests careful attention to both the reading subject and read "object." Moving between places, rocks, plants, animals, atmosphere, and eclipses, this interdisciplinary edited collection grounds the complex relations between text and world in the environmental humanities. The volume’s wide-ranging chapters are critical, often polemical, engagements with the question of the Anthropocene and the changing conversation around reading, interpretation, and textuality. They exemplify a range of work from across the globe and will be of great interest to scholars and students of the environmental humanities, ecocriticism, and literary studies.

This carefully crafted ebook collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Introduction: Ralph Waldo Emerson Books: The Conduct of Life: Fate Power Wealth Culture Behavior Worship Considerations by the Way Beauty Illusions Essays-First Series: History Self-Reliance Compensation Spiritual Laws Love Friendship Prudence Heroism The Over-Soul Circles Intellect Art Essays-Second Series: The Poet Experience Character Manners Gifts Nature Politics Nominalist and Realist New England Reformers Nature: Commodity Beauty Language Discipline Idealism Spirit Prospects Representative Men: Plato Emanuel Swedenborg Michel de Montaigne William Shakespeare Napoleon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe English Traits Society and Solitude: Civilization Art Eloquence Domestic Life Farming Works and Days Books Clubs Courage Success Old Age Letters and Social Aims: Poetry and Imagination Social Aims Eloquence Resources The Comic Quotation and Originality Progress of Culture Persian Poetry Inspiration Greatness Immortality Poetry: Poems (1847) May-Day and Other Pieces: May-Day The Adirondacs Occasional and Miscellaneous Pieces Nature and Life Elements Quatrains Translations Other Poems Addresses and Lectures: The American Scholar An Address in Divinity College Literary Ethics The Method of Nature Man the Reformer Lecture on The Times The Conservative The Transcendentalist The Young American Letter to President Van Buren The Man of Letters The Celebration of Intellect... Other Essays: The Lord's Supper Thoughts on Modern Literature Walter Savage Landor The Senses and the Soul Transcendentalism Prayers Fourierism and the Socialists Chardon Street and Bible Conventions Agriculture of Massachusetts Harvard University English Reformers Europe and European Books The Tragic Past and Present War Perpetual Forces Demonology The Preacher Milton Thoreau Michael Angelo Plutarch Ezra Ripley, D.D. Mary Moody Emerson Samuel Hoar Carlyle George L. Stearns Saadi American Civilization The Fortune of the Republic The Sovereignty of Ethics The Natural History of Intellect