Mr. Emerson's Revolution
by Jean McClure Mudge /
2015 / English / PDF
6.2 MB Download
This volume traces the life, thought and work of Ralph Waldo
Emerson, a giant of American intellectual history, whose
transforming ideas greatly strengthened the two leading reform
issues of his day: abolition and women's rights. A broad and deep,
yet cautious revolutionary, he spoke about a spectrum of inner and
outer realities-personal, philosophical, theological and
cultural-all of which gave his mid-career turn to political and
social issues their immediate and lasting power. This
multi-authored study frankly explores Emerson's private prejudices
against blacks and women while he also publicly championed their
causes. Such a juxtaposition freshly charts the evolution of
Emerson's slow but steady application of his early neo-idealism to
emancipating blacks and freeing women from social bondage. His
shift from philosopher to active reformer had lasting effects not
only in America but also abroad. In the U.S. Emerson influenced
such diverse figures as Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson and William
James and in Europe Mickiewicz, Wilde, Kipling, Nietzsche, and
Camus in Europe as well as many leading followers in India and
Japan. The book includes over 170 illustrations, among them eight
custom-made maps of Emerson's haunts and wide-ranging lecture
itineraries as well as a new four-part chronology of his life
placed alongside both national and international events as well as
major inventions. Mr. Emerson's Revolution provides essential
reading for students and teachers of American intellectual history,
the abolitionist and women's rights movement―and for anyone
interested in the nineteenth-century roots of these seismic social
changes.
This volume traces the life, thought and work of Ralph Waldo
Emerson, a giant of American intellectual history, whose
transforming ideas greatly strengthened the two leading reform
issues of his day: abolition and women's rights. A broad and deep,
yet cautious revolutionary, he spoke about a spectrum of inner and
outer realities-personal, philosophical, theological and
cultural-all of which gave his mid-career turn to political and
social issues their immediate and lasting power. This
multi-authored study frankly explores Emerson's private prejudices
against blacks and women while he also publicly championed their
causes. Such a juxtaposition freshly charts the evolution of
Emerson's slow but steady application of his early neo-idealism to
emancipating blacks and freeing women from social bondage. His
shift from philosopher to active reformer had lasting effects not
only in America but also abroad. In the U.S. Emerson influenced
such diverse figures as Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson and William
James and in Europe Mickiewicz, Wilde, Kipling, Nietzsche, and
Camus in Europe as well as many leading followers in India and
Japan. The book includes over 170 illustrations, among them eight
custom-made maps of Emerson's haunts and wide-ranging lecture
itineraries as well as a new four-part chronology of his life
placed alongside both national and international events as well as
major inventions. Mr. Emerson's Revolution provides essential
reading for students and teachers of American intellectual history,
the abolitionist and women's rights movement―and for anyone
interested in the nineteenth-century roots of these seismic social
changes.