Emerson Society Papers

Volume 6, Number 2 Fall 1995 Emerson Society Papers Distinguished Achievement Award Presented to Merton M. Sealts, Jr. "So Emerson, by recurrent challenge and by cumulative among scholars, and holds it his duty to maintain and example, provoked and inspired and educated his stu encourage it among various generations of scholars. But dents—and in turn his students' students—to walk on he is motivated by more than a sense of duty. Sealts their own feet,to work with their own hands,to speak their entered with real delight into dialogue with his students own minds,just as every great teacher invariably does." and colleagues, transforming what might have been duty So wrote Merton M. Sealts, Jr. in "Emerson as Teacher," into something more real and satisfying. He brought the an essay that teaches us much about Emerson's own self- same kind of commitment to his scholarly work as well, devised career as a lecturer and freelance mentor to the always seeing it as a way of teaching and of entering into world,and also about the process ofteaching and learning. dialogue with others, and demanding of himself a kind of The Emerson Society honors Sealts as one of our great historical acumen that gives his work a lasting reliability. Emersonians,a man who has made an enormous contribu His deeply respected work on Melville would ordinarily tion to our understanding ofEmerson through his scholar account for one very busy career, but he pursued Emerson ship, teaching, and tireless mentoring of doctoral just as tenaciously, leaving us an important legacy. His students—both before and after they earned their degrees. Emerson's Nature—Origin, Growth, Meaning (1969; Sealts was educated at The College of Wooster(A.B., 1979) is an important sourcebook for teachers and stu 1937) and Yale (Ph.D., 1942). After brief teaching stints dents of Emerson's difficult but essential first book, and at the University of Missouri and Wellesley College, he it teaches those who use it how to consider a literary text joined the faculty at Lawrence University in 1948, and in terms of its genesis and process of production. His moved to the University of Wisconsin—Madisonin 1965. editions of volumes 5 and 10 of The Journals and Miscel He is now Henry A. Pochmann Professor of English laneous Notebooks ofRalph Waldo Emerson were ofgreat Emeritus at Wisconsin. It was at Wisconsin that his work importance to this distinguished edition, one that had with graduate students made,and continues to make,such much to do with initiating the revival ofinterest in Emerson a strong and positive impact on our profession. In 1974 in the past two decades. His extended explorations of Sealts was granted an Honorary Doctorate from The Emerson's conception and enactment of the intellectual College of Wooster, and in 1992 he was awarded the life, centering around his concept of the "scholar," re Hubbell Medallion for his achievements as a scholar of sulted in Emerson on the Scholar (1992), the definitive American Literature by the American Literature Section examination of Emerson's lifelong struggle to define his of the Modem Language Association. role and vocation, and an important call to reexamine the There are many things to praise in Sealts' distin middle and later phases ofEmerson's career. The Emerson guished and continuing career, but it is his generosity—a Society pays honor to Merton Sealts, who has "by cumu generosity of both time and energy expended, and a lative example, provoked and inspired and educated his generosity of spirit—that stands out. He understands the students—arid in turn his students' students." importance of cooperation, collaboration, and dialogue —David M. Robinson always been available. This insight diminished for him the appar Abstracts of Baltimore ALA Papers ent contrast between his earlier apparent inaction and his increas SESSION 2: Emerson in Recent Criticism. ingly visible political activism. Chair, Gary L. Collison,.Penn State-York Campus The following panels were presented by the Emerson Society What Emerson meant by the "fatal" aspect in part derives at the sixth annual conference of the American Literature Association on 26 May in Baltimore, Maryland from the Stoics, with whom he had a considerable familiarity. But Emerson's Centrality to American Literary his was not exclusively the significant determinism, or "indiffer 'Fate, Freedom, and Foreknowledge': Assent, ence to circumstances," usually associated with Roman Stoicism, Studies: Will It Endure? SESSION 1: Emerson's Later Work. Stoical Belief, and Reformed Theology in for he also drew from the (earlier) Greek Stoical conception of the Lawrence Buell Chair, David M. Robinson, Oregon State University Emerson's The Conduct of Life universe—especially from the fundamental stoical injunction to Harvard University live according to the universal "law of nature." Through a virtuous Robin Sandra Grey The question of whether Emerson will seem to remain central to Tears for Emerson attitude and consciously willed virtuous action—emphasized by American literary and cultural studies seemed more open during University ofIllinois-Chicago Epictetus, Arrian, Seneca, and Aurelius—a wise individual could Julie Ellison the middle third of this century than it does now, despite recent live in conformity with the orderly and beautiful "law of nature," University of Michigan Recent efforts to acknowledge the relation between Emerson's challenges to white androcentric canonicity. The question now Die Conduct of Life and the political struggles of America in the and so achieve the same autonomy and uniformity as the divine fire facing us is rather what form will that centrality take? Emerson How does genre pertain to the representation of mourning in 1850s have raised the problem of how to reconcile the pole of that shapes him or her. The pursuit of virtue for its own sake, or studies present a shifting picture in this respect. Since 1980 the Emerson's writings in response to the death of his son, Waldo, in strength of character, as Zeno expressed it, enabled the individual forces that Emerson designates as "immovable limitations," or Whicherian "plot" of Emerson's career as a brief Transcendental 1842? A comparison of "Threnody" and "Experience" suggests "fate," with his increasing disposition toward individual political not so much to resign to Fate's dicta as to conform nobly with those efflorescence followed by a long decline into "acquiescence" has that Emerson's strongest engagement with antebellum fictional activism. How did Emerson distinguish virtuous conduct from laws not subject to the accidents of circumstance. Emerson sug been displaced by a renewed attention to the late Emerson, which narratives absorbed with the death of children and with the writer- "passive obedience" or "lameness"—from versions of moral col gested this in his remark,"The right use of Fate is to bring up our is viewed with more respect. Henceforth, in addition, we may parent's affectionate witness is diverted away from the essays and lusion? To see the fatal forces only as recalcitrant obstacles, or at conduct to the loftiness of nature." expect to see more study ofthe sociopolitical valences of Emerson's into verse, in a series of complicated defensive and expressive best as provocations to insight and power, ascribes to Emerson the Similarly, in the terms of reformed theology, Emerson never, moral abstractions, of the ethical (as against the epistemological) moves. Lidian Jackson Emerson's letters, Ellen Tucker Emerson's acceptance of a period ofresignation and loss ofindividual agency. I think, professed resignation to arbitrary benefits or afflictions side of Emerson's thinking, and of Emerson's thought and writing manuscript biography of her mother, Charles Newcomb BCing's dispensed to a passive and oblivious population without the coop But the litany of catastrophes at the beginning of "Fate" suggests in its transatlantic contexts. Dial story,"The Two Dolons," and Margaret Fuller's letters allow that Emerson was alarmed by the apparent impotence of individual eration of human aspiration or judgment. In suggesting that the us to assess both of Emerson's texts as partaking of a highly social, will in the face of the inexorable laws of the universe. While laws that govern the universe are not susceptible to the chaos of Radical Humanism?!: Stanley Caveil's Emerson intensively written response to the child's death throughout the Emerson undoubtedly differentiated between the inevitably moral human motives, Emerson does not remove all contingency—at Gary Wolfe family circle. Fuller, above all, emerges as the chief mourner of purposes of the universe and the inherently immoral motives of least not that of human judgment and moral choice: "I hope we Indiana University Waldo. Her reactions illuminate the child's imagined role as slavery in America, the problem of efficacious individual agency have reached the end of our unbelief, have come to a belief that mediator in the relationship between herself and Emerson. As a was still central to him. Emerson's conception of fate, in fact, there is a Divine Providence in the world, which will not save us No one has had more to do with the resurgence of Emerson studies crisis in family cultures, Waldo's death ramifies in ways that lead involved the conscious and deliberate choice or "assent" that is the but through our own cooperation" (1854 Fugitive Slave Law over the past two decades than Harvard philosopher Stanley to further questions about the relationship of genre to paternity, of exertion of individual agency. Most important to him was the Address). Lincoln, according to Emerson's later oration, offered Cavell, who argues that the philosophical and ethical value of writerly work to domestic locations, and of sentiment to audience. insight that the opportunity for giving or withholding assent had his countrymen not so much a mystical atonement (in giving "Emersonian perfectionism" stems from Emerson's confrontation America back its integrity) as the uncompromising commitment to with the problem of skepticism—with the "unhandsome .

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