Selected Essays of Emerson

Author: (American) Emerson
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-10-01
Features: Emerson was an outstanding thinker, essayist, poet, and orator in 19th-century America. As the leader of the Transcendentalist literary movement, Emerson cherished nature, revered self and spiritual values, and rejected materialism. His teachings were hailed as the "most important secular religion in America" and had a significant influence on figures such as Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, Henry Miller, as well as Nietzsche and Bergson. This book selects thirty-six of Emerson's most spiritual essays: Nature embodies his highest ideal of harmony between humans and nature; "Self-Reliance," "The Method of Right Reading," and "The Significance of Action" are all excerpted from The American Scholar, a "declaration of independence in thought"; "On Art," "On Beauty," "On Love," "On Culture," "On Self-Reliance," and "On Success" are filled with profound aphorisms and brilliant metaphors. In his biographical sketches of "representative figures" such as Plato the philosopher, Montaigne the skeptic, Shakespeare the poet, as well as Napoleon, Goethe, and Thoreau, one can everywhere feel the passion of an orator and the depth of a philosopher. Historians have called him the "prophet and explorer of New England." What is even more valuable is that his thoughts and writings continue to inspire freshness and clarity to this day.