Emerson’s Sublime Science ISBN: 9780230389717 Platform/Publisher: SpringerLink / Palgrave Macmillan UK Digital rights:Users: unlimited; Printing: unlimited; Download: unlimited Subjects: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection;
Emerson's Sublime Science explores relationships among Emerson's poetics, theory of the sublime, and engagement with electromagnetism. The book illustrates how Davy's chemistry and Faraday's physics revealed to Emerson a sublime universe in which matter is boundless electrical force. It argues that Emerson translated this discovery into a sublime writing style crafted to galvanize readers with the insight that matter is energy. In illuminating Emerson's project, this study also uncovers connections among British Romanticism, American Romanticism, and nineteenth-century science.
Eric Wilson is Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University.