Representative Men: Seven Lectures - Including: Uses of Great Men, Plato or the Philosopher, Swedenborg or the Mystic, Montaigne or the Skeptic, Shakspeare or the Poet, Napoleon Man of the World AND Goethe or the Writer

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Overview

Representative Men: Seven Lectures - Including: Uses of Great Men, Plato or the Philosopher, Swedenborg or the Mystic, Montaigne or the Skeptic, Shakspeare or the Poet, Napoleon Man of the World AND Goethe or the Writer

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The definitive collection of Emerson's major speeches, essays, and poetry, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson chronicles the life's work of a true "American Scholar."

As one of the architects of the transcendentalist movement, Emerson embraced a philosophy that championed the individual, emphasized independent thought, and prized "the splendid labyrinth of one's own perceptions." More than any writer of his time, he forged a style distinct from his European predecessors and embodied and defined what it meant to be an American. Matthew Arnold called Emerson's essays "the most important work done in prose."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780979311963
Publisher:	Beta Nu Publishing
Publication date:	04/10/2008
Pages:	132
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Andrew Delbanco is the Mendelson Family Chair of American Studies and Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University.

Read an Excerpt

"Emerson is a writer who grows restless if he stays too long with any proposition. And so, as one of his most intelligent modern readers, Judith Shklar, has pointed out, he built Representative Men around the principle of 'rotation,' which had become a political axiom in Jacksonian America—the idea that no man, no matter how imposing, should be accorded permanent authority. Representative Men honors the language of democracy in its very title, and it employs political metaphors throughout. 'We are multiplied,' the opening chapter declares, 'by our proxies.' "

—From the Introduction by Andrew Delbanco

Table of Contents

I.	Uses of Great Men	7
II.	Plato; or, The Philosopher	39
	Plato: New Readings	78
III.	Swedenborg; or, The Mystic	89
IV.	Montaigne; or, The Skeptic	141
V.	Shakspeare; or, The Poet	179
VI.	Napoleon; or, The Man of the World	211
VII.	Goethe: or, The Writer	247

Preface

"Emerson is a writer who grows restless if he stays too long with any proposition. And so, as one of his most intelligent modern readers, Judith Shklar, has pointed out, he built Representative Men around the principle of 'rotation,' which had become a political axiom in Jacksonian America—the idea that no man, no matter how imposing, should be accorded permanent authority. Representative Men honors the language of democracy in its very title, and it employs political metaphors throughout. 'We are multiplied,' the opening chapter declares, 'by our proxies.' "

—From the Introduction by Andrew Delbanco