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Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-82, one of America's most influential authors and thinkers; b. Boston. A Unitarian minister, he left his only pastorate, Boston's Old North Church (1829-32), because of doctrinal disputes. On a trip to Europe Emerson met Thomas CARLYLE, S.T. COLERIDGE, and WORDSWORTH, whose ideas, along with those of Plato, the Neoplatonists, Asian mystics, and SWEDENBORG, strongly influenced his philosophy. Returning home (1835), he settled in Concord, Mass., which he, Margaret FULLER, THOREAU, and others made a center of TRANSCENDENTALISM. He stated the movement's main principles in Nature (1836), stressing the mystical unity of nature. A noted lecturer, Emerson called for American intellectual independence from Europe in his Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard ("The American Scholar," 1837 [.txt-only version]). In an address at the Harvard divinity school (1838), he asserted that redemption could be found only in one's own soul and intuition. Emerson developed transcendentalist themes in his famous Journal (kept since his student days at Harvard), in the magazine The Dial, and in his series of Essays (1841, 1844). Among the best known of his essays are "The Over-Soul," "Compensation," and "Self-Reliance." He is also noted for his poems, e.g., "Threnody," "Brahma," and "The Problem." His later works include Representative Men (1850), English Traits (1856), and The Conduct of Life (1870).

From the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia. Copyright © 1991 by Columbia University Press.

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