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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Selected criticism on Emerson's Nature

  • Bishop, Jonathan. Emerson on the Soul. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1964.
  • Burke, Kenneth. "I, Eye, Ay--Emerson's Early Essay on "Nature.' Thoughts on the Machinery of Transcendence.'" Sewanee Review 74 (Oct-Dec 1966): 875-95. Reprinted in his Language as Symbolic Action, in Trancendentalism and Its Legacy, Sealts, Simon, and Rountree. Francis, Richard Lee. "The Architectonics of Emerson's Nature." American Quarterly 19 (Spring 1967): 39-52. Partially reprinted in Sealts and Rountree.
  • Berthoff, Warner. "Introduction" to Nature. San Francisco: Chandler, 1968.
  • Tuerk, Richard. "Emerson's Nature--Miniature Universe." ATQ no. 1 (1 Quarter 1969): 110-13.
  • LaRosa, Ralph C. "Emerson's Sententiae in Nature (1836)." Emerson Society Quarterly, no. 58 (1 Quarter 1970): 153-57.
  • Cameron, Kenneth Walter. Young Emerson's Transcendental Vision: An Exposition of His World View with an Analysis of the Structure, Backgrounds and Meaning of "Nature" (1836). Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1971.
  • Hoffman, Michael J. "Emerson's Nature and the Struggle for Symmetry." In The Subversive Vision, pp. 31-46. Port Washington: Kennikat, 1972.
  • Kasegawa, Koh. "Notes on American Nature Writing (3): Emerson's Nature and His Landscape Aesthetic." Thought Currents in English Literature 46 (December 1973): 113-27.
  • Neufeldt, Leonard. "The Law of Permutation--Emerson's Mode." ATQ 21 (Winter 1974): 20-30.
  • Francis, Richard Lee. "The Evolution of Emerson's Second 'Nature.'" ATQ 21 (Winter 1974): 33-35.
  • Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Puritan Origins of the American Self. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975.
  • Cox, James M. "R. W. Emerson: The Circles of the Eye." In Emerson: Prophecy, Metamorphosis, and Influence, 1975, pp. 57-81.
  • D'Avanzo, Mario L. "Emerson's 'Scoriae.'" American Notes and Queries 13 (May 1975): 141-43.
  • Wood, Barry. "The Growth of the Soul: Coleridge's Dialectical Method and the Strategy of Emerson's Nature." PMLA 91 (May 1976),: 385-97. Reprinted in Sealts (below).
  • Sealts, Merton M. and Afred R. Ferguson, eds. Emerson's "Nature"--Origin, Growth, Meaning. 2d ed. Carbondale: SIU P, 1979. Includes Sealts, "The Composition of Nature, 175-93, and Barbara Packer, "The Instructed Eye: Emerson's Cosmogony in "Prospects," pp. 209-21.
  • Francis, Richard Lee. "Completing the Sphere: Emerson's Revision of the Mottoes of Nature." In Studies in the American Renaissance 1979, ed. Joel Myerson, pp. 231-37. Boston: Twayne, 1979.
  • Porter, Carolyn. "Method and Metaphysics in Emerson's 'Nature.'" Virginia Quarterly Review 55 (Summer 1979): 517-30.
  • Pease, Donald. "Emerson, Nature and the Sovereignty of Influence," Boundary 2, 8 (1980): 43-74.
  • Cheyfitz, Eric. The Trans-Parent: Sexual Politics in the Language of Emerson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981.
  • Becker, Alton L. "On Emerson on Language." Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (1981): 1-11.
  • Packer, B. L. Emerson's Fall: A New Interpretation of the Major Essays. NY: Continuum, 1982.
  • Steele, H. Meili. "Romantic Epistemology and Romantic Style. Emerson's Development from Nature to the Essays." In Studies in the Amcerican Renaissance 1983, ed. Joel Myerson, pp. 187-202. Charlottesville: UP of Va, 1983.
  • Ellison, Julie. Emerson's Romantic Style. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984.
  • Cascardi, A. J. "Emerson on Nature: Philosophy beyond Kant," ESQ 30 (4 Quarter 1984): 201-210.
  • Bell, Ian F. A. "The Hard Currency of Words: Emerson's Fiscal Metaphor in Nature," ELH 52 (Fall 1985): 733-53.
  • Donaghue, "Emerson at First: A Commentary on Nature" In Emerson and His Legacy, pp. 23-47/
  • Van Leer, David. "The structure of Nature." In Emerson's epistemology, 1986, pp. 19-77.
  • Cameron, Kenneth Walter. Emerson's Prose Poem: The Structure and Meaning of Nature (1836). Hartford, Conn: Transcendental Books, 1988.
  • Hodder, Alan D. Emerson's Rhetoric of Revelation: Nature, the Reader, and the Apocalypse Within. University Park: Pa State UP, 1989.
  • Albanese, Catherine. Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1990.
  • Hannon, James. "Emerson as Poet and Preacher in Nature," Religious Humanism 24 (Sumamr 1990): 139-43.
  • Brown, Lee Rust. "Emersonian Transparency," Raritan 9 (Winter 1990): 127-44.
  • Wilson, R. Jackson. "Emerson's Nature: A Materialist Reading." In Subject to HIstory: Ideology, Class, Gender, ed. David simpson, pp. 119-143. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.
  • O’Keefe, Richard R. Mythic Archetypes in Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Blakean Reading. Kent State, 1995.]
  • von Frank, Albert. "The Composition of Nature: Writing and the Self in the Launching of a Career." Biographies of Books: The Compositional Histories of Notable American Writings, ed. James Barbour and Tom Quirk, 11-40. Missouri, 1996.
  • Wilson, Eric. "Weaving: Breathing: Thinking: The Poetics of Emerson’s Nature." ATQ 10 (1996): 5-24.
  • Versluis, Arthur. The Hermetic Book of Nature: An American Revolution in Consciousness. Grail, 1997.
  • Cameron, Kenneth Walter. "Additional Notes for Emerson’s Nature." ARLR 11 (1997): 59-66.
  • Parkes, Graham. "'Floods of Life' around 'Granite of Fate': Emerson and Nietzsche as Thinkers of Nature." ESQ 43 (1997): 207-40.
  • von Frank, Albert J. "'Build Therefore Your Own World': Emerson's Constructions of the 'Intimate Sphere.'" Emersonian Circles, 1-10.
  • Wilson, Eric. "'Terrible Simplicity': Emerson's Metaleptic Style." Style 31 (1997): 58-80.
  • Geldard, Richard G. God in Concord: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Awakening to the Infinite. Larson Publications, 1999.
  • Wilson, Eric. "The Electric Field of Nature." Emerson's Sublime Science, 1999, pp. 128-175.
  • Richardson, Robert D., Jr. "Emerson and Nature." Cambridge Companion to Emerson, 97-105.
  • West, Michael. Transcendental Wordplay: America’s Romantic Punsters and the Search for the Language of Nature. Ohio, 2000.
  • Rossi, William. "Emerson, Nature, and Natural Science." Historical Guide to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 101-50.
  • Wilson, Eric. "Emerson’s Nature, Paralogy, and the Physics of the Sublime." Mosaic 33 (2000): 39-58.


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