Overview
Counters the view of the late Emerson's decline by rethinking his engagement with liberal education and his intellectual relation to Whitman, William James, Charles Eliot, and Du Bois. Recent scholarship has inspired growing interest in the later work of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and a recognition that the conventional view of an aging Emerson, distant from public matters and limited by declining mental powers, needs rethinking. Sean Meehan's book reclaims three important but critically neglected aspects of the late Emerson's ""mind"": first, his engagement with rhetoric, conceived as the organizing power of mind and, unconventionally, characterized by the trope ""metonymy""; second, his public engagement with the ideals of liberal education and debates in higher education reform early in the period (1860-1910) that saw the emergence of the modern university; and third, his intellectual relation to significant figures from this age of educational transformation: Walt Whitman, William James, Harvard president Charles W. Eliot, and W. E. B. Du Bois, Harvard's first African American PhD. Meehan argues that the late Emerson educates through the ""rhetorical liberal arts,"" and he thereby rethinks Emerson's influence as rhetorical lessons in the traditional pedagogy and classical curriculum of the liberal arts college. Emerson's rhetoric of mind informs and complicates these lessons since the classical ideal of a general education in the common bonds of knowledge counters the emerging American university and its specialization of thought within isolated departments.
Full Product Details
Author: Sean Ross Meehan (Royalty Account)
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Imprint: Camden House Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.70cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.450kg
ISBN: 9781640140233
ISBN 10: 1640140239
Pages: 188
Publication Date: 22 January 2019
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional and scholarly
,
General/trade
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.
Reviews
This book promises to force a reappraisal of Emerson's role in shaping and defending liberal education in America. By highlighting Emerson's fascination with rhetoric, the book demonstrates a long-standing tradition of resisting reductionistic systems of education and self-improvement. It's an important study that deserves close attention. --Roger Thompson, Stony Brook University
Author Information
SEAN ROSS MEEHAN is Professor of English and Director of Writing, Washington College, Maryland.
