View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What trouble did the Emerson family encounter around the time of Emerson's engagement?

2. How did Emerson characterize Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

3. What was Emerson's first printed work?

4. What was Emerson's relationship with his reading?

5. How does Richardson characterize Emerson's second wife?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did Emerson travel to the South?

2. How does Richardson describe Emerson as a student?

3. How did Emerson describe Ellen's death?

4. What was Emerson's relationship with Margaret Fuller?

5. Describe Emerson's relationship with Thoreau.

6. What is Emerson doing when Richardson introduces us to him?

7. How did Emerson support himself after Harvard?

8. What was the Transcendental Club?

9. What turning point did Emerson reach in his junior year of college?

10. How does Richardson describe the birth of American Transcendentalism?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How did Emerson overcome the grief and loss he experienced so many times? What counterbalanced the sorrow and misery? What emotional, spiritual or personal reserves did he draw on?

Essay Topic 2

What kind of writer was Ralph Waldo Emerson? Was he a poet, or a religious writer, or a writer of some other sort? Define your terms and make a case based on the text.

Essay Topic 3

Are there aspects of Emerson's personality that Richardson overlooks or underplays? Make a case that Richardson has misrepresented Emerson in some way. What other Emersons do you think there might be, whose stories are still waiting to be told? Use the text for evidence, and explain your hunch.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 806 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample