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This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transatlantic Relations: Romanticism and the Emergence of a Self-Reliant American Reader Stephanie M. Hicks Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature The University of Edinburgh 2018 Declaration of Originality I declare that this thesis has been composed solely by myself and that it has not been submitted, in whole or in part, in any previous application for a degree. Except where stated otherwise by reference or acknowledgment, the work presented is entirely my own. Signature __________________________ Date ______________________________ ii | P a g e Abstract This thesis explores three of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s seminal texts, Nature (1836), the “Woodnotes” poems (1840, 1841), and Representative Men (1850), in a transatlantic Romantic context. Augmenting typical transatlantic explorations of Emerson’s literature which often use these three works in demonstration of the various European Romantic assimilations n Emerson’s writing, the texts considered in this study are understood to engage with one British work predominately. Emerson engages antagonistically in the pages of Nature with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection (1825), in the “Woodnotes” poems with William Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814), and in Representative Men with Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841). In each instance, Emerson engages with a text that he understands to be particularly representative of the intellectual and creative genius that its British author wields and, as such, one that is anxiety-inducing in the influence that it wields. This thesis demonstrates that, in engaging with these works, Emerson performs with increasing sophistication a process of “‘creative reading,’ that is, an act of reading (influx) through which creation (efflux, expression) is made possible through a transcendence of the past. In doing so, Emerson confronts and attempts to gain independence both from the personal influence that these texts and, more significantly, their authors wield. In engaging in Nature, the “Woodnotes” poems, and Representative Men with Aids to Reflection, The Excursion, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History respectively, Emerson assimilates into his works various elements of Coleridge’s, Wordsworth’s, and Carlyle’s thought. Each of the three chapters comprising this thesis explores Emerson’s intellectual indebtedness in this regard and, as such, the explorations incorporate a scholastic focus like that found in the majority of Emersonian transatlantic scholarship. In each instance, however, explorations of Emerson’s works also reveal the American writer’s performance of a liberating act of detachment or departure from the ideas with which he engages. iii | P a g e These intellectual detachments distinguish Emerson’s thought from that of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle, and are often attended by formal departures from the texts with which Emerson engages. Augmenting typical transatlantic explorations of Emerson’s works, this thesis focuses not only Emerson’s Romantic assimilations, but also on his detachments. Finally, in each instance, Emerson’s confrontations reflect Robert Weisbuch’s assessment in Atlantic Double-Cross (1986) that nineteenth century Anglo-American literary relations are ‘always more than personal and individual’ (21). That is to say, in each instance, Emerson confronts not only Coleridge, Wordsworth’s, and Carlyle’s personal creative and intellectual influence, but their extrapersonal or national influence as British writers. This confrontation of national influence is reflected in the fact that Emerson’s detachments incorporate temporal reimaginings, re-visions of time that nullify the potency of the past and of the influence wielded by tradition by emphasising the present and the future, focusing on the subjective power of the mind. As such, Emerson’s conceptions of time demonstrate a conflation of two specifically American understandings of temporality as defined by Robert Weisbuch – vertical time and futurism – both developed by nineteenth century American writers in order to nullify the influence of Old World, specifically British, tradition, and to establish an account of time in which the United States’ comparative lack of distinct cultural history is excused. In precis, this thesis demonstrates that Nature, the “Woodnotes” poems, and Representative Men issue from Emerson’s creative reading of Aids to Reflection, The Excursion, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History respectively. These acts of creative reading demonstrate in each instance the inextricability of Coleridge’s, Wordsworth’s, and Carlyle’s ‘personal’ creative and intellectual influence, as well as their ‘extrapersonal’ or national influence. iv | P a g e Lay Summary This thesis explores three instances in which Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writing engages with and emerges from antagonistic interactions with texts by three seminal British writers: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle. While Emerson’s literature is often considered in the context of his engagements with transatlantic, namely British, Romantic writers and their works, often and most recently, Emerson’s writing has been explored for its various and varied connections to Romanticism. Scholars have looked across Emerson’s oeuvre and noted the various elements indebted to, assimilated from, and influenced by the writing of various Romantic figures. This thesis augments that approach by identifying three of Emerson’s works, two of which are often considered in relation to British influence, in which the American writer engages predominately with a single work. Chapter one concerns the relationship between Emerson’s essay, Nature (1836) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection (1825); chapter two explores Emerson’s engagement in his poems, “Woodnotes I” (1840) and “Woodnotes II” (1841), with William Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814); and finally, chapter three considers Emerson’s longer work, Representative Men (1850) alongside Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841). In each instance, Emerson uses the British text as a target for a process by which he confronts and attempts to nullify the influence that its author wields, influence that is at once both ‘personal’ and creative, as well as ‘extrapersonal’ or v | P a g e national. This process, which Emerson outlines obliquely in various works concerned with the relationship between reading and writing, is one in which a writer can be both indebted to a source and self-reliant from it, by first submitting to and assimilating from that source before performing an act of ‘detachment’ or moving away. Emerson performs this process in his engagements with the three British texts and in doing so attempts not only to distinguish himself and his works intellectually from these influential sources, but also to distinguish himself as an American writer specifically. vi | P a g e Acknowledgements The following thesis would not have been possible without the guidance of Dr Tim Milnes and Dr Andy Taylor, to whom I am both indebted and exceedingly grateful. I would also like to acknowledge the incredible and unwavering support of my parents, without whom I certainly would not have made it through this process. Even from 4,000 miles away, they were very much present throughout the past four years and an anchor without which I would have been adrift. Finally, an acknowledgement to my Edinburgh support system, without whom I might have lost my sanity; thank you, Laura, Adam, Steph, Zac, Valdeko, and Elliott. vii | P a g e Abbreviations For regularly cited works, the following abbreviations have been used parenthetically in the text followed by page number and, where applicable, volume. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Aids to Reflection. The AR Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by John Beer, vol. 9, Routledge, 1993. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Collected Works of CW Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edited by Robert Ernest Spiller, and Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. 10 vols. Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by EL Stephen Whicher and Robert Ernest Spiller, vol. 3, Harvard University Press, 1959. F Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Friend. Edited by Barbara E. Rooke, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1993. 2 vols. JMN The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Edited by William H. Gilman, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960-1982. 16 vols. viii | P a g e L Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Columbia University Press, 1939. 6 vols. OH Carlyle, Thomas.
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