Emerson Bicentennial Essays

Edited by Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson

512 pages, 6 x 9

6 b& w illustrations

Cloth ISBN 0-934909-89-X • $60.00

Massachusetts Historical Society

June 2006

Drawn from papers presented at the conference that celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary of his birth, Emerson Bicentennial Essays presents seventeen studies of Emerson that address five general themes: “The Construction of Emerson,” “Emerson’s Audience,” “Emerson the Reformer,” “Emerson the Poet,” and “Emerson and the World of Ideas.” The contributors address subjects such as the construction of Emerson’s biography, his New England lecture series, his sermons, his poetics, and more general topics such as Emerson and women’s rights, idealism, the civil rights movement, reader-response criticism, intellect, feeling, history, fate, experience, instinct, language, agnosticism, and scientific naturalism. In their treatment of the aesthetic, social, religious, philosophical, and political aspects of his life and work, these scholars confirm Emerson’s preeminence in American intellectual and literary history.

Contributors:
Ronald A. Bosco (University of Albany, State University of New York) * Lawrence Buell (Harvard University) * Robert Burkholder (The Pennsylvania State University, University Park) * Phyllis Cole (The Pennsylvania State University, Delaware County) * T. Gregory Garvey (State University of New York, College at Brockport) * Len Gougeon (University of Scranton) * Robert D. Habich (Ball State University) * Robert N. Hudspeth (University of Redlands, Emeritus) * Wesley T. Mott (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) * Joel Myerson (University of South Carolina, Emeritus) * Barbara Packer (University of California, Los Angeles) * Susan L. Roberson (Texas A&M University at Kingsville) * David M. Robinson (Oregon State University) * Nancy Craig Simmons (Virginia Polytechnic State University, Emerita) * Joseph M. Thomas (Caldwell College) * Gustaaf Van Cromphout (Northern Illinois University) * Albert J. von Frank (Washington State University) * Laura Dassow Walls (University of South Carolina) * Sarah Ann Wider (Colgate University)

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Ronald A. Bosco is Distinguished University Professor of English and American Literature at the University at Albany, State University of New York, and General Editor for The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Joel Myerson is Carolina Distinguished Professor of American Literature Emeritus at the University of South Carolina, and Textual Editor for The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.