Summary:
Provides a brief biography of poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. Examines his poetic legacy in American literature. Compares him to his 19th century contemporaries.
The American literature of the nineteenth century is characterised by a spirit of Romanticism. The years, from 1828 to 1865, from the Jacksosian era to the Civil War is called "the American Romantic Period." It was the era of the blossoming of a "distinctively American literature" (Abrams, page 206). Also known as the American Renaissance, this period was marked by eminent writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The age produced works of originality and excellence in all literary genres (except drama) not exceeded in quality by later American literature. This epoch in the history of American literature is also referred to as "the Age of Transcendentalism", after the literary and philosophical movement in New England, which revolved around the "most distinguished of the New England Transcendentalists"(.....
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