Emerson and the Art of the DiaryOxford University Press, 1988 - 159 pages This first extended literary description and analysis of Emerson's journals, argues that they, and not his essays, are Emerson's masterpiece, constituting one of the greatest commentaries on nineteenth-century America by one of our most acute formal intelligences. First developing the critical methodology needed to examine the journal form, a genre long neglected by literary scholars, Rosenwald goes on to consider how Emerson the diarist found his form and what form he found. Included are comparisons between the journals and Emerson's lectures and essays, other Transcendentalist journals, the German aphorism-book, and books of quotation by Montaigne and Eckermann. Finally, the author gives an account of how, in his old age, Emerson lost his mastery of the form. |
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Alcott American American Renaissance anecdotes apho aphorism book argument artist audience Boswell character Coleridge's consider context conversation Cotton Mather course describe diary discourse distinction Emer Emerson the diarist Emerson the essayist Emerson writes Emerson's journal Emersonian entry F. O. Matthiessen fact formal fragments friends friendship genre Goethe Harold Bloom individual interest JMN editors JMN VIII Joel Porte John Locke Julien Green lectures and essays letter Literary Transcendentalism Lockean commonplace book Margaret Fuller Margaret Fuller Ossoli Mary Moody Emerson Max Frisch memory mind Montaigne nature notion Novalis particular Pepys perhaps philosophical practice precisely present Puritan quotation book quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson reader record regular journals relation remark rism seems sense sentences sequence son's sort Stendhal suggests Tagebuch things Thoreau thought tion tradition Transcendentalist journal truth University Press utterance volume whole Wideworld wrote York