Representative Men: Seven Lectures

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Overview

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American philosopher and poet, known for. A staunch advocate of individualism and clear-sighted critic of societal pressures, he led the early 19th century's Transcendentalist movement and greatly influenced the later New Thought movement. Representative Men contains the following seven lectures by Emerson:

Uses of Great Men
Plato; or, the Philosopher
Swedenborg; or, the Mystic
Montaigne; or, the Skeptic
Shakspeare; or, the Poet
Napoleon; or, the Man of the World
Goethe; or, the Writer

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781775415961
Publisher:	The Floating Press
Publication date:	06/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	210 KB

About the Author

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803?—1882) was a renowned lecturer and writer, whose ideas on philosophy, religion, and literature influenced many writers, including Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. After an undergraduate career at Harvard, he studied at Harvard Divinity School and became an ordained minister, continuing a long line of ministers in his family. He traveled widely and lectured, and became well known for his publications Essays and Nature.

About the Introducer
BRENDA WINEAPPLE is the author of Hawthorne: A Life and Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. She has twice a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. She lives in New York City.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

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

Historical Introduction

Statement of Editorial Principles

Textual Introduction

REPRESENTATIVE MEN: SEVEN LECTURES

1. Uses of Great Men

2. Plato, or the Philosopher

Plato: New Readings

3. Swedenborg, or the Mystic

4. Montaigne, or the Skeptic

5. Shakspeare, or the Poet

6. Napoleon, or the Man of the World

7. Goethe, or the Writer

Notes

Textual Apparatus

Annex A: The Manuscript

Appendix 1: The 1850 Compositors

Appendix 2: Revisions in the Manuscript

Annex B: Parallel Passages

Index

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

Andrew Delbanco is Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Among his many publications are The Puritan Ordeal and The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope (both from Harvard).

Editorial Reviews

The most important work done in prose.”
—Matthew Arnold

From the Publisher