Ralph Waldo Emerson is universally recognized as one of
America's most influential authors and thinkers. Before achieving
eminence as lecturer, essayist, and poet, though, he was a
Unitaarian preacher. "Emerson in His Sermons" is the first major
study of the sermons since the publication of "The Complete Sermons
of Ralph Waldo Emerson." Susan Roberson examines Emerson's
ministerial career from 1826 to 1832, shedding new light on those
early, crucial years in Emerson's personal and intellectual
development.
Treating the sermons extensively as an autobiographical text,
Roberson establishes that Emerson's years in the pulpit were
pivotal and that his sermons are key texts in revealing the
essential development of his thought. Central to Roberson's
explication of the sermons is Emerson's conception of
self-reliance, his invention of a new hero for a new age, and his
merging of his own identity with that heroic idea.
Roberson focuses on Emerson's reaction to what was perhaps the
most signifcant event in his personal life: the death of his young
wife, Ellen, of tuberculosis in 1831, after only sixteen months of
marriage. Roberson's correlation of the sermons written during that
time with the complexity of Emerson's emotional and intellectual
response to the tragedy of Ellen's illness and death is the most
detailed and sophisticated treatment of that material to date.
Roberson understands Emerson's emergence from the ministry as
his rejection of ready-made institutions and sytems of thought.
Through her careful readings of the sermons, Roberson finds that
Emerson's objective was less the translation of his life into
writing than the translation of his life through writing. By
considering the sermons in this way, Roberson is able to enrich our
understanding of the private and passionte impulses of this seminal
thinker.
"Emerson in His Sermons" offers the first real look at how the
sermons fit into Emerson's own development and will have a
far-reaching impact on Emerson scholarship. Anyone concerned with
the cultural and religious history of America will find this book
invaluable.
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