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 fo...