Essays and Lectures

Emerson who has been our nations most persuasive advocate for individualism also admits the forces that American society exerts against individualism. While praising what he called the immense and crescive self he dramatises and documents its vicissitudes. The American Scholar which Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to as our intellectual Declaration of Independence The Divinity School Address which many of his listeners regarded as atheistic the call to Self-Reliance as well as the more contentious realisations of Circles and especially Experience are all included here. Together with his insightful views on the customs way of life and future of the English and Americans he also paints wide-ranging portraits of Montaigne Shakespeare and other representative individuals in this work.