Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Major Prose

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780674417069
• eBook ISBN: 9780674286313
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Upon its completion, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971–2013) was hailed as a major achievement of scholarship and textual editing. Drawing from the ten volumes of the Collected Works, Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson have gathered some of Emerson's most memorable prose published during his lifetime and under his direct supervision. The editors have enhanced those selections with additional writings to produce the only anthology that represents in a single volume the full range of Emerson's written and spoken prose genres—sermons, lectures, addresses, and essays—that took on their public life in the pulpit or lecture hall, or on the printed page.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Prose demonstrates the remarkable scope of Emerson's interests, from science, literature, art, philosophy, natural history, and religion to pressing social issues such as slavery and women's rights, to the character of his contemporaries, including Lincoln and Thoreau. Emerson's classic essays Nature, "Self-Reliance," and "Experience" complement his less familiar but no less vital texts, including the deeply heterodox sermon on "The Lord's Supper," which effectively announced his resignation from the ministry, and late essays on "American Civilization," "Character," and "Works and Days." Edited according to the most rigorous modern standards, Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Prose provides an authoritative compendium of writings by one of America's most significant literary figures and public intellectuals.

Index

In this Index, endnotes are keyed to page and endnote number. Typically, numbered endnotes identify the full name of persons, the authors and titles of works of prose, dramatic writing, or poetry, and the significance of major events the first time they occur in Emerson’s writings printed in this volume or in the endnotes.

Aberdeen, Lord. See George Hamilton-Gordon

Abolition, 130, 135, 173, 265–291, 350–366, 381–387, 440–447, 455–456, 509

Adam, 68

Adams, Grizzly, 494, 497n42

Adams, John, 134, 149n11, 361, 485

Adams, John Couch, 293, 309n10

Adams, John Quincy, 290nn35–36, 421

Adrastia, Law of. See Plato

Aeschylus, 221n6, 244, 462; Agamemnon, 204, 221n6; Eumenides, 249n33; The Libation Bearers, 413, 429n37; The Suppliants, 429n37

Æolus, 38, 69n4

Aesop, 195, 200n17, 216

Africa, 269, 277, 285, 287, 407, 432

Africans, 265–291, 440, 447n2, 505

African shadow-catchers, 267, 288n3

Agamemnon, 179n7

Agassiz, Louis, 83, 90n15, 402n6, 491

Agriculture, 50

Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, 216, 224n47

Aiken, John, 32n19

Airy, Sir George Biddell, 293, 309n10

Alabama, 383

Aladdin’s lamp, 196, 200n18

Alaric (king of the Visigoths), 416, 430n43

Alaska Purchase, 533–534n24

Alcott, Amos Bronson, xxix, 72–73n65, 199n2, 264n35, 468–469n12

Alexander II (czar), 522, 533–534n24

Alexander the Great, xix, 70n16

Alexandrian stanza, 133

Alfieri, Count Vittorio, 309n1

Alfonso the Wise, 256, 263n20

Alfred the Great (of England), 100, 108n13, 136, 249n47, 303, 331, 356, 358

Algiers, 15, 99, 477, 479n12

Ali, Mehemet, 519, 533n13

Alleghanies, the, 336

All Flows. See Ebb and flow

Allston, Washington, 149n4; “The Paint King,” 263n26; “To the Author of ‘The Diary of an Ennuyée,’” 149n4

Alphonso of Castille. See Alfonso the Wise

Alpine tunnels, 519, 532–533n12

Alternate generation, 407, 427n11

Alternation. See Ebb and flow

America (schooner), 348n2

America, 116, 196, 210, 218, 243, 252, 287, 316, 330–347, 350–366, 370, 375, 383, 405, 410, 411, 441, 465, 472–478, 481, 493, 494, 508, 519, 525, 528

American Anti-Slavery Society, 273

American civilization, 432–450

American Colonization Society, 270, 289n16

American government, 279–282, 350–366, 438–447, 472–478

American Homestead Act (1862), 472, 478n1

American Liberty, 199, 472–478

American Lyceum, 184, 187, 190–192

American oratory, 186–187

American Parnassus, 188

American Revolution, 385

Americans, the, 144–146 passim, 183, 191, 194, 197, 421, 423, 440–446, 458; Contrasted to the English, 292–311, 330–349

American spiritual history, 170

American West, 184, 239

America’s Cup, 348n2

Ampère, André-Marie, 88, 90n23

Analogy, 30, 45, 49, 52, 79, 84, 87, 93, 152, 390, 392, 401

Anatomy, 83, 316, 390, 393

Anaxagoras, 87, 90n22, 147, 239

Anaximenes of Miletus, 239, 248n34, 411

Andes Mountains, 133, 222n11

Angelology, 231–232, 247n20

Angennes, Catherine d’ (Marquise de Rambouillet), 373, 380n16

Anglicanism, 1, 508

Anglo-Americans, 330–349

Anglo-Saxons, 84, 192, 345, 520

Animal magnetism, 17, 32n9, 67

Animation, 392

The Annual Register: (1838), 289n27; (1839), 290n28

Annursnuc Hill (Concord), 459, 470n29

Antaeus, 17

Antietam, Battle of, 478n2

Antigua, 272, 289n21

Antinomianism, 141, 150n23, 167, 242

Aphrodite, 69n8

Apollo (Greek god), 116, 200n8, 244, 526

Apollo (sculpture), 356, 365n9

Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 223n25

Arabia, 96, 105, 435, 482; desert of, 519, 532–533n12

Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, 16, 32n6, 200n18, 497n44

Arabs, 405

Arago, François, 492, 497n37

Archimedes, 27, 33n26, 306, 307, 521, 529

Arctic Ocean, 533–534n24

Arctic voyagers, 395

Ariosto, Ludovico, 157, 162n9

Aristarchus of Samos, 411, 429n32

Aristophanes, 374, 380n17

Aristotelians, or Aristotelian philosophy, 329n25, 397

Aristotle, 58, 72n48, 72n61, 155, 197, 215, 259, 319, 328n16, 360, 486, 517, 531n2, 526, 534n32; Physics, 223n35; Politics, 464, 471n46

Arkwright, Sir Richard, 485, 495–496n15

Arnim, Elisabeth (Bettina) Brentano von, 231, 247n19; Die Günderode, 247n19

Arrested development. See John Hunter

Art, 21, 35, 38, 39, 43, 53, 64, 74, 85, 94, 95, 99–105 passim, 114, 124, 128, 142, 144–147, 153–154, 166, 173, 193, 196, 202–203, 210, 211, 219, 227, 232–237 passim, 241, 254–255, 259, 276, 284–285, 292, 294, 301, 314, 315, 325, 337, 339, 359, 362, 369, 371, 375, 398, 417, 432–439 passim, 451, 452, 457, 482, 485–491 passim, 517–521 passim, 524, 525, 528

Artemis (Greek goddess), 71–72n41

Ascot, England, 302

Asia, 15, 199, 508

Asia Minor, 276, 525–526

Asimov, Isaac, “Nightfall,” 69n2

Assabe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Textual Policies
• Sermon CLXII [“The Lord’s Supper”] (1832)
• The Uses of Natural History (1833–1835)
• Nature (1836)
• Humanity of Science (1836, 1847–1848)
• The American Scholar (1837)
• The Divinity School Address (1838)
• Self-Reliance (1841)
• Circles (1841)
• The Transcendentalist (1842, 1849)
• New England: Genius, Manners, and Customs (1843–1844)
• The Poet (1844)
• Experience (1844)
• Nominalist and Realist (1844)
• An Address Delivered in the Court-House in Concord, Massachusetts, on 1st August, 1844, on the anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West indies (1844)
• England (1848–1852)
• Uses of Great Men (1850)
• The Anglo-American (1852–1855)
• American Slavery (1855)
• Address at the Woman’s Rights Convention (1855)
• Mr. R. W. Emerson’s Remarks at the Kansas Relief Meeting in Cambridge (1856)
• The Natural Method of Mental Philosophy (1858)
• Fate (1860)
• American Civilization (1862)
• Thoreau (1862)
• The President’s Proclamation (1862)
• The Scholar (1863)
• Character (1866)
• Works and Days (1870)
• Credits
• Index