Nature

Transcendentalism borrowed heavily from English Romanticism in locating the divine force in nature. Following the lead of Wordsworth and other romantic poets, Transcendentalists like Emerson...

As always, it is particularly important to look at quotations in context to help us be aware of what the author is trying to say by including them in their writing. In this case, if we have a look...

Personification is the attribution of human qualities to something which is not human. In chapter 1, Emerson states that Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort...

In Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson endeavors to clarify the difficulties and hindrances to Man's successful union with Nature. From a reading of excerpts of his book, he explains how we...

Emerson uses a fair amount of figurative language, rhetorical devices which make his writing all the more interesting and vivid and help him to make his argument better by keeping his audience more...

Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature" has a lyrical tone, as much of the writing has the quality of music or poetry. For example, Emerson writes the following: The rays that come from those heavenly...

What Emerson is seeking to highlight in these lines is what he regards as a difference in attitude towards the natural world between adults and children. On this reading, too many adults look at...

Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to...

Emerson states his themes pretty straightforwardly. He outlines a number of nature's beneficial effects on human beings and how it seems to even restore us to a better and more fundamental version...

In Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson sought to explain his own philosophical theories about the place of people in the universe. In the Introduction, he explains that he sees "nature" as everything...

In Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature, the poet praises the natural world. Nature is Emerson's first book, and his love and respect for nature and the guidance he believes mankind can find in the...

The death of a "dear friend" is the question in this quotation from Emerson. Who is the dear friend, and why has he died? Emerson writes, "To a man laboring under calamity . . ." In this, he is...

Both essays show Emerson at his most idiosyncratic. These are beautiful essays that make amazing assertions and whose arguments are, in part, exercises in self-justification. In “Self Reliance,”...

Emerson differentiates between the ownership of land and the ownership of the landscape of nature. He writes as follows: The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of...

I believe that what Emerson means by saying that our age is retrospective is that we value thinkers and artists and heros of the past more than we value those of our own times. For example, we...

Tension exists in Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature" because, according to Emerson, Nature and Culture operate as competing forces. In the introduction to "Nature," Emerson claims, Our age is...

The Transcendentalists believed the presence of God or the divine (however they might individually define it) was made manifest in nature. Emerson speaks to this in the above quote, saying we...

History teachers would not like this quote from Emerson. What he is saying is that the people (of Emerson's time) too often look back to history to learn more about their present situations....

Here is a sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all...

According to Emerson's "Nature," we are all connected to nature most truly when we are alone. The "heavenly bodies," in particular, are what connect us to the sublime, because they represent...

In one of the opening lines to Emerson's text, the quote brings out the special and unique quality that Emerson sees in the natural world. The description of the stars as "heavenly worlds"...

Just prior to this quotation, Emerson has explained that, if we really want to be solitary, we must go out into nature—not just to our own rooms. When we are surrounded by the trappings of society,...

Emerson sees language as organically grown from the natural setting. Thus, Emerson believes language is a reflection of the world and the human being's place within it. Emerson begins his...

In "Nature," Ralph Waldo Emerson begins by discussing what he means by the word "nature" in the poetic sense, saying that its primary meaning is "the integrity of impression made by manifold...

The Transcendentalist movement (of which many see Emerson as the unofficial "leader") was about religious perceptions "rooted in the ideas of American democracy," a response by a group of Bostonian...

The first way that the woods can transform a man is by turning him back into a child. Not literally of course, but the woods can restore the child like wonder in a man. "In the woods too, a man...

A Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that all things in the world are a reflection of the Divine Soul. Therefore, the physical facts of the world are a pathway to the spiritual world,...

Emerson believed that spending time in the woods was good for a person's all-around wellbeing. Early on in Nature, Emerson discusses how going out into the woods and gazing at the sky can remind a...

Transcendentalism was a movement in the late 1820s and 1830s. The ideas are not religious in nature, but an understanding of life and how everyone is connected in the world. Key concepts of the...

In this quote, Emerson is encouraging readers to take advantage of the abilities they have and to set out and achieve all that is possible. One of the main themes of this text is the idea that all...

In “Nature,” Emerson lays out his conception of transcendental unity. Nature, or its comtemplation, is a path towards unity with God. As he puts it, in the woods “I become a transparent eye-ball; I...

Within the essay "Nature," Emerson utilizes parallel structure in asserting, "The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the...

Early in his 1836 essay, Emerson observes that there is a difference in the way a man regards nature as he moves from childhood to adulthood. The relationship is still there, but it evolves from...

To do a rhetorical analysis of nature, you should list out in a word processing file a series of major rhetorical strategies, and then, as you read through the essay, note each time you find a...

Emerson's quote from his work, Nature, helps to bring out how individuals can exist apart from others, yet keep them in mind. This is essential to the writing process. Just as Emerson constructs...

Central to Emerson's essays and the rich diversity of thought therein is his belief that man "is part and parcel of God." The Over-Soul that includes all men is even superior to Nature, although...

Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson can be read by a range of age groups, but it does depend on their educational background, motivation, and the pedagogical techniques used. Emerson uses a wide range of...

In his essay “Nature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson uses the philosophy of transcendentalism from other schools of thought on humankind’s acquisition of knowledge. Expanding upon rationalist and empiricist...

Emerson's treatment of idealism in the essay "Nature" is complex and ambivalent. For an example of this complexity and ambivalence, we need look only to Emerson's understanding of the commonplace...

I think the key is in the opening paragraph when he asks, "Why should we not also enjoy an original relation to the universe." He says this in response to the question that precedes this...

The third chapter of Nature is devoted to beauty. Ralph Waldo Emerson tells us that there are three primary ways of considering beauty; the second is “the higher [or]…spiritual element.” Emerson...

Ralph Waldo Emerson is a preeminent Transcendentalist writer (novelist, essayist, and poet). Known for his interest in the individual and mysticism (the thought that spiritual truth is attained...

In Chapter III of his most well-known work, Nature, Emerson writes that "The influence of the forms and actions in nature, is so needful to man, that, in its lowest functions, it seems to lie on...

Emerson famously says in this essay that in the woods he becomes a "transparent eyeball," or "part and particle of God," phrases which suggest a kind of dissolution of the self. Understanding...

Earlier nature writers such as John James Audubon and Charles Darwin had written about (and painted scenes of) nature, but none had looked to nature as the source of spiritual inspiration as...

In the introduction to his series of essays entitled Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson provides his reasons for writing the work. He explains that individuals spend too much time looking at the past...

Generally speaking, an introduction lays the foundations for the larger work to follow, and Nature is no exception to this. In fact, in this particular case, you might get the sense that one of...

In Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson employs both a philosophical tone to appeal to his readers' intellect and a poetic tone to delight their emotions. Let's look at a couple of examples of each. The...

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s mystic epiphany comes early on in his essay. As the name “mystic epiphany” implies, the moment is imbued with a hefty sense of spiritual awareness. Emerson describes himself...

The stars are such a common sight that we take them for granted. This is what Ralph Waldo Emerson implies in Nature. Yet if the stars appeared “one night in a thousand years,” people would look at...