Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803-1882)

2. Born in Boston in 1803 • Brought up in a strictly religious household • Went to Harvard to study the ministry, like the eight generations before him • Read a great deal of philosophy and theology

3. Accepted a ministry post at age 25 • His young wife died 17 months later of tuberculosis • Started having doubts about some of his religious doctrines • Left his position and traveled throughout Europe • Met up with Coleridge and Wordsworth

4. Moved back to the States and remarried • His first major work was an essay called “Nature” • Started to give lectures • At Harvard, gave famous “The American Scholar” speech • Implored American scholars to free themselves from the past • Gave another speech at Harvard: “Divinity-School Address” • Seemed anti-religious & wasn’t invited back to Harvard for three decades

5. Resided in Concord • Was a leader of the Transcendentalists • Met often with other famous writers/thinkers of the era • Henry David Thoreau was his “pupil”

6. His son, Waldo, died of scarlet fever at age 5 (1842) • Wasn’t quite the same emotionally after that • Suffered major memory loss in later years • Couldn’t recall ordinary words • Referred to himself as a poet, even though he wrote prose • Nicknamed the “Sage of Concord” • The intellectual center of the “American Renaissance”