Representative Men: Seven Lectures

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Overview

"Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men Representative Men is a collection of seven lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published as a book of essays in 1850. The first essay discusses the role played by "great men" in society, and the remaining six each extol the virtues of one of six men deemed by Emerson to be great. Emerson was inspired by the Romantic belief that there exists a "general mind" that expresses itself with special intensity through certain individual lives. It reflects an appreciation of genius as a quality distributed to the few for the benefit of the many.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646795420
Publisher:	Cosimo Classics
Publication date:	01/23/1905
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) was an American poet and essayist. Universally known as the Sage of Concord, Emerson established himself as a leading spokesman of transcendentalism and as a major figure in American literature. His additional works include a series of lectures published as Representative Men (1850), The Conduct of Life (1860), and Society and Solitude (1870).

Read an Excerpt

"Emerson is a writer who grows restless if he stays too long with any proposition. And so, as one of his most intelligent modern readers, Judith Shklar, has pointed out, he built Representative Men around the principle of 'rotation,' which had become a political axiom in Jacksonian America—the idea that no man, no matter how imposing, should be accorded permanent authority. Representative Men honors the language of democracy in its very title, and it employs political metaphors throughout. 'We are multiplied,' the opening chapter declares, 'by our proxies.' "

—From the Introduction by Andrew Delbanco

Table of Contents

Historical Introduction

Statement of Editorial Principles

Textual Introduction

REPRESENTATIVE MEN: SEVEN LECTURES

1. Uses of Great Men

2. Plato, or the Philosopher

Plato: New Readings

3. Swedenborg, or the Mystic

4. Montaigne, or the Skeptic

5. Shakspeare, or the Poet

6. Napoleon, or the Man of the World

7. Goethe, or the Writer

Notes

Textual Apparatus

Annex A: The Manuscript

Appendix 1: The 1850 Compositors

Appendix 2: Revisions in the Manuscript

Annex B: Parallel Passages

Index

Preface

"Emerson is a writer who grows restless if he stays too long with any proposition. And so, as one of his most intelligent modern readers, Judith Shklar, has pointed out, he built Representative Men around the principle of 'rotation,' which had become a political axiom in Jacksonian America—the idea that no man, no matter how imposing, should be accorded permanent authority. Representative Men honors the language of democracy in its very title, and it employs political metaphors throughout. 'We are multiplied,' the opening chapter declares, 'by our proxies.' "

—From the Introduction by Andrew Delbanco

Andrew Delbanco is Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Among his many publications are The Puritan Ordeal and The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope (both from Harvard).

Editorial Reviews

The most important work done in prose.”
—Matthew Arnold

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