Ralph Waldo Emerson :: essays research papers

As one of the most important authors in American history, Ralph Waldo Emerson is vigorous known as the prominent as the leader of the transcendentalism movement. alike a distinguished American essayist and poet, Emerson was the first distinctively American author to influence European thought.Emerson was born in capital of Massachusetts, Massachusetts on May 25, 1803. Seven of his ancestors were ministers, and his father, William Emerson, was minister of the First Church (Unitarian) of Boston. Emerson graduated from Harvard University at the age of 18 and for the next three years taught school in Boston. In 1825 he entered Harvard Divinity School and in 1826 was approbated to preach by the Middlesex Association of Ministers. Despite ill health, he delivered occasional sermons in churches of the Boston area. In 1829 he became minister of the Second Church (Unitarian) of Boston. In that aforesaid(prenominal) year he married Ellen Tucker, who died 17 months later. In 1832 Emerson re signed from his pastoral escort after declaring that he had ceased to regard the Lords Supper as a permanent ceremony and could not continue to administer it. On Christmas Day, 1832, he left the U.S. for a tour of Europe and stayed for some time in England, where he do the acquaintance of such literary notables as Walter Savage Landor, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, and William Wordsworth. His run into with Carlyle was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.On his return in 1833, Emerson colonized in Concord, Massachusetts, and became active as a chider in Boston. His addresses, on such subjects as The Philosophy of History, Human Culture, Human Life, and The Present Age, were base on material in his Journals (published posthumously, 1909-14), a collection of observations and notes that he had begun magic spell a student at Harvard. His most detailed statement of touch sensation was reserved for his first published book, Nature (1836), which appeared anonymously, b ut was soon mightily attributed to him. The volume received little notice, but it has come to be regarded as Emersons most original and significant work, offering the essence of his philosophy of transcendentalism. This dreamer doctrine opposed the popular materialist and Calvinist views of life and at the like time voiced a plea for freedom of the individual from schmalzy restraints.The next year Emerson applied these ideas to cultural and intellectual problems in his lecture The American Scholar, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa