Baker, Jennifer J. “Emerson, Embryology, and Culture.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 3.1: 15-39.
[Baker grounds Emerson’s theories of genius and cultural advancement in contemporary evolutionary theory.]
Berger, Jason. “Emerson’s Operative Mood: Religious Sentiment and Violence in the Early Works.” Studies in Romanticism 54.4: 477-502.
[Berger argues for the continuity of Emerson’s thought from his early optimism to the political radicalism of his antislavery years.]
Bloom, Harold. “Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson.” The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime. New York: Spiegel & Grau. 151-220.
[This engaging essay considers Emerson “the founder of American Orphism…our shamanistic father.”]
Boatright, Michael D. and Mark A. Faust. “How Daring Is the Reading: Emerson’s Aesthetic Reading.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 49.4: 39-54.
[Boatright and Faust infer educational reading objectives from Emerson’s essays.]
Bosco, Ronald A. and Joel Myerson, eds. Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Prose. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
[Emerson’s major sermons, lectures, and essays are collected into one elegant volume.]
Carr, Ryan. “Toward a Genealogy of Americanist Expressionism.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 3.1: 89-117.
[Identifies expressionism in F. O. Matthiessen’s discussion of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and T. S. Eliot.]
Constantinesco, Thomas, and François Specq, eds. Revue Française d’Études Américaines. 140 (2014).
[Special issue includes essays by Bruce Ronda, David Robinson, Joseph Urbas, Daniel S. Malachuk, Thomas LeCarner, and Mathieu Duplay.]
Deming, Richard. “Rilke and Emerson: the Case against Influence as Such.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 170-184.
[Explores “some elective affinities” between Rilke’s thinking and Emerson’s.]
Dolan, Neal and Laura Jane Wey. “Emerson and China.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca.
Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 236-248.
[A reflexive investigation of Emerson’s influence in modern China.]
Dunston, Sue. “Emerson’s Philosophy of Creativity.” Romanticism and Philosophy: Thinking with Literature. Ed. Sophie Laniel-Musitelli and Thomas Constantinesco. New York and London: Routledge 222-232.
[Argues that “Emerson’s theory-practice of creativity…abandons artifacts for creating and mastery for improvising.”]
Duquette, Elizabeth. “The Man of the World.” American Literary History 27.4: 635-64. [Contrasts Emerson’s view of Napoleon with contemporaries who saw him as a “hard-working hero of sentimental romance.”]
Elbert, Monika. “Transcendentalist Triangulations: The American Goethe and his Female Disciples.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 61-82.
[Argues that Goethe was “the spiritual standin for the real-life intellectual crush Fuller and Alcott had…on Emerson.”]
Evans, K. L. “Emerson; or, the Critic – The Arnoldian Ideal.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 185-201.
[Investigates similarities between Arnold and Emerson.]
Fernandez, Ingrid. “Necro-Transcendence/Necro-Naturalism: Philosophy of Life in the Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson” Death: Representations in Literature: Forms and Theories. Ed. Adriana
Teodorescu. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. 117-37.
[Explores the slippage between Emerson’s desire to cease “grop[ing] among the dry bones of the past” and his return to the tombs of Waldo and Ellen.]
Follett, Danielle. “The Tension between Immanence and Dualism in Coleridge and Emerson.” Romanticism and Philosophy: Thinking with Literature. Ed. Sophie Laniel-Musitelli and Thomas Constantinesco. New York and London: Routledge 209-221.
[Discusses Emerson’s debt to and departure from Coleridge.]
Foust, Mathew A. “Confucius and Emerson on the Virtue of Self-Reliance.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 249-261.
[Posits that Confucianism influenced Emerson’s “Self-Reliance.”]
Friedl, Herwig. “Emerson in Germany, 1850-1933: Appreciation and Appropriation.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 136-157.
[Explores Germany’s reception of Emerson, which runs from appropriation for German nationalism to liberal cosmopolitanism.]
Goodman, Russell B. “Ralph Waldo Emerson.” American Philosophy before Pragmatism. New York: Oxford University Press. 147-199.
[Emerson figures prominently in this history of American philosophy considered in transatlantic contexts.]
Gougeon, Len. “Emerson, Great Britain, and the International Struggle for the Rights of the Workingman.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N.H.: Dartmouth
College Press. 83-96.
[Argues that Emerson became deeply sympathetic to the working classes during his visit to Europe in 1847-48.]
Greenham, David. “‘Altars to the Beautiful Necessity’: The Significance of F. W. Schelling’s ‘Philosophical Inquiries in the Nature of Human Freedom’ in the Development of Emerson’s Concept of Fate.” Journal of the History of Ideas 76.1: 115-37.
[Explicates Emerson’s engagement with Schelling.]
Grimstad, Paul. “The Perversity of Skepticism: Qualia and Criteria in Emerson and Poe.” Romanticism and Philosophy: Thinking with Literature. Ed. Sophie Laniel-Musitelli and Thomas Constantinesco. New York and London: Routledge 233-244.
[Examines Emerson and Poe “as representatives of an American romanticist response” to philosophical skepticism.]
Habich, Robert D. “An ‘Extempore Adventurer’ in Italy: Emerson as International Tourist, 1832-1833.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 97-110.
[Investigates Emerson’s travel in terms of tourism theory, identifying three stages of his growth.]
Howell, William Huntting. Against Self Reliance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
[Howell shapes Emerson into a foil for ideologies of dependence pervasive in American culture.]
Irmscher, Christoph. “Linen Shreds and Melons in a Field: Emerson and his Contemporaries.” The Cambridge History of American Poetry. Ed. Alfred Bendixen and Stephen Burt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 192-216.
[Defends Emerson’s poetry, claiming that it “achieves a surprising intimacy” when occupied with quotidian subjects.]
Jackson, Larry. “A Different Path: Why Stanley Cavell Won’t Get to the Point.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 29.4: 503-21.
[Claims that Cavell’s style, informed in part by Emerson’s in “Fate,” serves as a potent strategy for confronting American racism.]
Jones Jr., Douglas A. “Douglass’ Impersonal.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 61.1: 1-35.
[Argues that Douglass enhanced Emerson’s conception of the impersonal to destroy racial categories advanced by contemporary pseudoscience.]
Laniel-Musitelli, Sophie and Thomas Constantinesco, eds. Romanticism and Philosophy: Thinking with Literature. New York and London: Routledge.
[Three essays concerning Emerson are listed here individually.]
LaRocca, David. “‘Eternal Allusion’: Maeterlinck’s Readings of Emerson’s Somatic Semiotics.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 113-135.
[Argues that Maeterlinck’s engagement with Emerson’s essays contributed to Symbolism, the European movement in arts and letters.]
Laugier, Sandra. “The Ordinary, Romanticism, and Democracy.” MLN 130.5: 1040-54.
[Argues that Emerson’s and Thoreau’s turn to the ordinary is an expression of the romantic desire for the self – a desire making American democracy possible.]
Meister, Maureen. “An Intellectual Stew: Emerson, Norton, Brandeis.” Arts & Crafts Architecture: History and Heritage in New England. Hanover: University Press of New England, 2014. 64-91.
[Considers the inspiration the Society of Arts & Crafts gained from Emerson’s work.]
Miguel-Alfonso, Ricardo and David LaRocca, eds. A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press.
[The volume’s seventeen essays are listed here individually.]
Miguel-Alfonso, Ricardo. “Transcendental Modernism: Vicente Huidobro’s Emersonian Poetics.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 158-169.
[Asserts that Emerson was a “fundamental inspiration” for Vicente Huidobro and his poetic movement creacionismo.]
Mikics, David. “Emerson and Jewish Readers.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 301-309.
[Demonstrates Emerson’s resonance with American Jewish culture through such readers as Alfred Kazin, Saul Bellow, Stanley Cavell, and Harold Bloom.]
Mudge, Jean McClure, ed. Mr. Emerson’s Revolution. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers.
[Nine essays explore Emerson’s “metamorphosis from idealist philosopher to idealist-turned-activist.” Scholars contributing to the work include Phyllis Cole, Wesley T. Mott, David M. Robinson, Len Gougeon, Beniamino Soressi, and Alan Hodder. A free PDF of the book may be downloaded at openbookpublishers.com.]
Noble, Mark. “Emerson’s Atom: The Matter of Suffering.” American Poetic Materialism from Whitman to Stevens. New York: Cambridge University Press. 81-109.
[Reads Emerson in context of contemporary science, especially Michael Faraday’s field theory.]
Nutters, Daniel Rosenberg. “‘The Whole Conduct of Life’: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry James.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 202-214.
[Argues that Emerson goes beyond mere provincial foil for James’s cosmopolitan vision.]
Pease, Donald E. “The Anti-Slave from Emerson to Obama.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 31-42.
[Discusses Emerson’s engagement with Toussaint and Haitian revolutionaries.]
Richardson, Todd H. “‘Another protest that shall be heard around the world’: The Woman’s Journal and Women’s Pilgrimages to Concord, Massachusetts.” Concord Saunterer 23: 20-49.
[Argues that women’s rights activists’ conception of Emerson’s Concord reveals their “yearning to realize Concord’s revolutionary promise.”]
Robinson, David M. “Emerson, the Indian Brahmo Samaj, and the American Reception of Gandhi.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 43-60.
[Argues that Emerson’s openness to Hinduism “eventually set the stage for the American reception of Mahatma Gandhi.”]
Ruetenik, Tadd. “‘Self-Reliance,’ Plagiarism, and the Suicide of Imitation.” Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice 8.1: 70-9.
[Strategies for teaching “Self-Reliance” to discourage plagiarism in writing classes.]
Sacks, Kenneth S. “Emerson and some Jewish Questions.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca.
Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 265-300.
[Argues that Emerson progressed from stereotyping Jewish people, to activism against antisemitism, and finally to influence on Jewish religious practice in America.]
Sadarat, Roger. “Middle Eastern-American Literature: A Contemporary Turn in Emerson Studies.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 310-325.
[Identifies Emerson as a pivotal figure in the reception of such Persian poets as Hafez and later as an influence on Middle Eastern-American writers such as Ameen Rihani.]
Saito, Naoko. “Emerson and Japan: Finding a Way of Cultural Criticism.” A Power to Translate the World: New Essays on Emerson and International Culture. Ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and David LaRocca. Lebanon, N. H.: Dartmouth College Press. 217-235.
[Draws upon Emerson’s and Cavell’s meditations on grief and cross-cultural transformation to imagine Japan’s future.]
Schulenberg, Ulf. “‘Strangle the singers who will not sing you loud and strong’: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and the Idea of a Literary Culture.” Romanticism and Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Idea of a Poeticized Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [Characterizes Emerson as a “strong poet” who “prepared for the establishment of a genuinely post-metaphysical culture.”]
Scott, Mark. “Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Cambridge Companion to American Poets. Ed. Mark Richardson. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress. 61-76.
[Opines that Emerson’s “stanzas say that what mankind craves is a nation of Emersons.”]
Thompson, Roger. “Emerson and the Democratization of Plato’s ‘True Rhetoric.’” Philosophy and Rhetoric 48.2: 117-38.
[Argues that “Emerson sees in Plato … the possibility that universal law can somehow be connected to civic action.]
von Frank, Albert J., ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Major Poetry. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
[Includes selections from The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Volume IX, Poems (2011).]