![]() | Consciousness and Culture: Emerson and Thoreau Reviewed Subjects: Emerson Ralph Waldo 1803-1882 -- Criticism and interpretation; Thoreau Henry David 1817–1862 -- Criticism and interpretation; National characteristics American in literature; New England -- Intellectual life -- 19th century; Consciousness in literat; Emerson and Thoreau are the most celebrated odd couple of nineteenth-century American literature. Appearing to play the roles of benign mentor and eager disciple, they can also be seen as bitter rivals: America's foremost literary statesman, protective of his reputation, and an ambitious and sometimes refractory protégé. The truth, Joel Porte maintains, is that Emerson and Thoreau were complementary literary geniuses, mutually inspiring and inspired. Joel Porte is Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters, Cornell University. He has written extensively on American Renaissance figures and is the author of Emerson and Thoreau: Transcendentalists in Conflict and Representative Man: Ralph Waldo Emerson in His Time, among other books. |
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