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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where did Emerson move, in advance of writing Nature?
(a) His mother's house.
(b) His step-grandfather Ezra Ripley's house.
(c) His brother's house.
(d) Mary Moody Emerson's house.

2. What does Emerson say reality is masked by?
(a) Imagination.
(b) Culture.
(c) Daily routines.
(d) Human sinfulness.

3. What 1837 event related to slavery does Richardson say affected Emerson's emotional state?
(a) The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law.
(b) The Missouri compromise.
(c) The murder of an abolitionist.
(d) The removal of the Cherokee.

4. How does Richardson characterize Emerson's internal state in 1837?
(a) Tumultuous.
(b) Self-critical.
(c) Placid.
(d) Self-assured.

5. How does Richardson describe Emerson as a young boy?
(a) Silly and unpromising.
(b) Full of doubts.
(c) Talented and ambitious.
(d) Self-critical and motivated.

6. How does Richardson characterize Emerson's feelings on returning to America?
(a) Despairing about finding a career.
(b) Impatient to begin new work.
(c) Depressed about coming home.
(d) Anxious about finding his family well.

7. Where does Richardson say Emerson's interest in religion came from?
(a) His mother.
(b) His father.
(c) His brothers.
(d) Mary Moody Emerson.

8. On whom did Emerson's reading focus after he graduated from Harvard?
(a) Romantic poets.
(b) German Transcendentalists.
(c) Platonic philosophers.
(d) Scottish Common Sense philosophers.

9. What does Richardson say is the immovable anchor in Emerson's thought?
(a) That the mind is connected to everything.
(b) That the mind is unique in history.
(c) That individuality is divinity.
(d) That man can know God's mind.

10. How did the event described in the Prologue change Emerson's life?
(a) He gave up his independence and settled down.
(b) He secluded himself to write his first work.
(c) His religious beliefs took him away from the church.
(d) He retreated into solitude.

11. What was the Transcendental Club founded to discuss?
(a) The possibility of transcendence.
(b) The nature of God.
(c) The state of intellect in the U.S.
(d) The future of America.

12. What idea of Emerson's influenced Richardson's biography?
(a) That men can only be known through their historical context.
(b) That men are best described by the women in their lives.
(c) That the lives of great mean can tell us about all men.
(d) That some men's lives define the extremes of human experience.

13. In what movement does Richardson say was Lidian ahead of Emerson?
(a) Advocating the independence of American thought.
(b) Women's suffrage.
(c) Opposition to the Indian Removal.
(d) Abolition.

14. What limitation does Emerson describe in Christianity in his Divinity School Address?
(a) That no institution can interpose between man and God.
(b) That the church was corrupt.
(c) That priests were frequently hypocritical.
(d) That historical Christianity is founded on the Bible, not human nature.

15. Who came to live with Emerson after his brother Charles died?
(a) Caroline Sturgis.
(b) Elizabeth Hoar.
(c) Margaret Fuller.
(d) Ellery Channing.

Short Answer Questions

1. How did Emerson describe his experience of Ellen's death?

2. Why was Emerson's meeting with Carlyle a "white day in his years"?

3. Who does Richardson credit with the birth of American Transcendentalism?

4. How does Richardson characterize the beginning of Emerson's relation with Margaret Fuller?

5. How does Richardson characterize Emerson's feelings about the changes he made after Ellen's death?

(see the answer keys)

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