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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Richardson say motivated Emerson's feelings about Brook Farm?
(a) Fear of intimacy.
(b) Reticence about group enterprises.
(c) Aversion to financial risk.
(d) Difference of opinion with Ripley.

2. What did Emerson witness in Europe?
(a) Modern warfare.
(b) Famine and poverty.
(c) Severe economic crisis.
(d) Revolutions in England and France.

3. What theme does Richardson say Emerson began to write about as he turned forty?
(a) Isolation.
(b) Idealism.
(c) Political resistance.
(d) Mysticism.

4. What did Emerson begin to write about after returning to America?
(a) Getting older and facing death.
(b) His trip to England.
(c) The realizations he had in the Paris Jardin des Plantes.
(d) The political events he witnessed.

5. What did Emerson discover on reuniting with Carlyle?
(a) That they no longer saw eye to eye.
(b) That their friendship was as secure as ever.
(c) That they had discovered a number of the same things independently.
(d) That a hostility had opened within their friendship.

6. What idea of Hegel's did Emerson discover on returning from Europe?
(a) The importance of history.
(b) The importance of marriage.
(c) The importance of community.
(d) The importance of the heroic individual.

7. Whose coffin did Emerson open toward the end of his life?
(a) His mother's.
(b) Mary Moody Emerson's.
(c) Ellen's.
(d) Waldo's.

8. Which of Emerson's friendships was tested on Emerson's return from Europe?
(a) Hedge.
(b) Fuller.
(c) Thoreau.
(d) Sturgis.

9. How did "The Dial" change Emerson's writing?
(a) He stopped writing almost completely.
(b) He was writing shorter works.
(c) He was writing longer essays.
(d) He was writing less.

10. What does Richardson say is Emerson's last characteristic book?
(a) Essays 1844.
(b) His book on England.
(c) Representative Men.
(d) The 1844 Essays.

11. In what way did many of Emerson's friends affect him in the 1860s and 70s?
(a) By celebrating his accomplishments.
(b) By dying before him.
(c) By introducing him to new friends.
(d) By leaving him over time.

12. What did Emerson become interested in after discovering Hafiz?
(a) Asian history.
(b) The progress of history.
(c) Science.
(d) Prints and music.

13. With what point of Goethe's did Emerson conclude his lectures on great men?
(a) That we have to honor tradition even as we innovate.
(b) That we must put what we know into practice.
(c) That we must find the middle path between action and meditation.
(d) That the times had changed, and human life would be something new from this point.

14. In what way did Emerson try to form a commune?
(a) He tried to get friends to move to his neighborhood.
(b) He helped utopianists make their plans for communes in New York.
(c) He tried to interest others in buying shares in land to farm communally.
(d) He moved to Brook Farm part-time.

15. What began to appear in America as a result of Charles Fourier's work?
(a) New style hats.
(b) Communes.
(c) Organized unions.
(d) Poetry magazines.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Richardson characterize Emerson's response to his son's death?

2. How does Richardson characterize Emerson's feeling about the essay "The Poet?"

3. What side of Emerson was apparent in the volume of poems he published in 1846?

4. What was Emerson's hobby?

5. By what work of Emerson's was Jones Very impassioned?

(see the answer keys)

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