ALL ABOUT RALPH WALDO EMERSON Trevor Ray English 10 9/6/13 Dr. Rees

Who is Ralph Waldo Emerson?  He was the central figure of American Romanticism.  At the age of 14 he entered Harvard college  He was the Unitarian minister and was teaching at Boston's second church.  His Father died when he was 8 years old.

Why was his Career so Controversial?  He remarried Lydia Jackson and wrote a book called Nature  In 1830 he gained the fame for his lectures-notably “the American Scholar”  Harvard’s Conservative administration was outraged and was banned from speaking at the college for thirty years.  Emerson’s speeches and literature were considered controversial as they often challenged the globally accepted “facts” of religion.

How Was Emerson’s Optimism Challenged?  Emerson’s positivity toward idealist concepts and individuality was challenged when his son Waldo died in 1842 due to scarlet fever.  Two years after Waldo’s death, Emerson’s essay The Tragic appeared in the magazine the Dial.  After the 1870’s his memory began to deteriorate and the quality of his essays was lost.