-Emerson was born in 1803-He is often referred to as the "Father" of American Literature
-Was a poet, preacher, orator and essayist
-Articulated the new nation's prospects and needs through speech and writing
-Helped authors such as Rebecca Harding Davis, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Hart Crane, Robert Frost and A.R. Ammons "exploit" their work
-One of the first American writers to be recognized by the British and European literary establishments
-Writers such as Thoreau, Alcott and Stuart Phelps describe their emergence onto the literary scene in relationship to Emerson, to his influence as a teacher or writer or a speaker or an austere presence
-Joel Porte argues that "Emerson's fate, somewhat like Shakespeare's, was that he came to be treated as an almost purely allegorical personage whose real character and work got submerged in his function as a touchstone of critical opinion."
-He became the founder of Transcendentalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism
-Often described as a person who did not understand the world's evil or pain it brought
-His father William, a minister, died when he was 8 years old
-His mother, Ruth Haskins Emerson, supported he and his 4 other siblings (3 others died when they were quite young)
-Emerson's education was between Boston's Latin School and private tutoring by his aunt Mary Moody Emerson
-He attended Harvard on scholarship and struggled with the curriculum, indecisive about becoming a minister or a teacher
-He somewhat educated himself about writing and poetry
-In 1825, he entered Harvard Divinity School, following 9 generations of ministry in his family. Six years after his ordination, he resigned the ministry because he thought that formal Christianity only looked at "past traditions and words of the dead." Emerson was more interested in contemporary issues.
-Married Ellen Tucker in 1829, but lost her to tuberculosis, which also affected him
-Tucker left him with a substantial inheritance, which enabled him to buy and write books, later enabling him to gain more money from his publications and lecture tours
-He cared for his mentally-handicapped brother for twenty years
-In 1835, he married Lidian Jackson and moved to Concord where they had 4 children - Waldo, Ellen (named after Emerson's first wife, suggested by Lidian), Edith and Edward, who later edited his father's works and journals. Young Waldo died at 5 of scarlet fever.
-Emerson continued to work well into his seventies, relying on his daughter Ellen to help organize his lectures and journals
-He died in 1882 from pneumonia and was buried in Concord near Thoreau and Hawthorne
-He loaned Thoreau his property at Walden Pond
-He raised money to support the Alcott family, despite his belief that a philosopher should earn his own keep
-Emerson's initial fame came from his critique of the literary, religious and educational establishments of his day; known as an experimenter who urged Americans to reject their deference to old modes and values to continental traditions
-His work is characterized by a "combination of homely metaphors and grandiose goals, by his insistence on the present and his expectations of the future
-He kept 182 journals and notebooks over his career
-A critic of his first book entitled Nature, was offended by language that is sometimes "coarse and blunt"
-"Emerson's aim as a writer was less to originate a tradition than to produce active readers who would then refashion themselves and their culture"
*all info taken from Jean Ferguson Carr (University of Pittsburgh) - Heath Anthology of American Literature: Volume B, 5th Edition
No comments:
Post a Comment