Representative Men: Seven Lectures (Modern Library Classics) [Paperback]

Ralph Waldo Emerson (Author), Brenda Wineapple (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Modern Library Classics | Publication Date: June 8, 2004

Introduction by Brenda Wineapple

In 1845 Ralph Waldo Emerson began a series of lectures and writings in which he limned six figures who embodied the principles and aspirations of a still-young American republic. Emerson offers timeless meditations on the value of individual greatness, reconnecting readers with the everyday virtues of his “Representative Men”: Plato, in whose writings are contained “the culture of nations”; Emanuel Swedenborg, a “rich discoverer” who strove to unite the scientific and spiritual planes; Michel de Montaigne, “the frankest and honestest of all writers”; William Shakespeare, who “wrote the text of modern life”; Napoleon Bonaparte, who had the “virtues and vices” of common men writ large; and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who “in conversation, in calamity…finds new materials.”

This Modern Library Paperback Classic reflects the author’s corrections for an 1876 reprinting.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The most important work done in prose.”
—Matthew Arnold

About the Author

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803?—1882) was a renowned lecturer and writer, whose ideas on philosophy, religion, and literature influenced many writers, including Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. After an undergraduate career at Harvard, he studied at Harvard Divinity School and became an ordained minister, continuing a long line of ministers in his family. He traveled widely and lectured, and became well known for his publications Essays and Nature.

About the Introducer
BRENDA WINEAPPLE is the author of Hawthorne: A Life and Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. She has twice a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities. She lives in New York City.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library; Modern Library Pbk. Ed edition (June 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812970055
• ISBN-13: 978-0812970050
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,287,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

There are few people as quoted and quotable as Ralph Waldo Emerson, founder of the transcendental movement and author of classic essays as Self-Reliance, Nature, and The American Scholar. Emerson began his career as a Unitarian minister and later put those oratory skills to move us toward a better society. More remains written on him than by him.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Emerson's 'great man', February 20, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Representative men: Seven lectures (Emerson's complete works)

Great men are those who inspire new great men into being. So Emerson understood in his seven portraits of human greatness. The poet Shakespeare and the philosopher Plato, the skeptic Montaigne and the mystic Swedenborg,the man of the world Napoleon and the writer Goethe.
Of great men he said,"Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious..... We call our children and our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and every circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them."
It is interesting that of Emerson's great men two would certainly be in question today. Swedenborg does not have the followers in our day that he had in Emerson's. Napoleon today can be considered in these terms only if we are also willing to discuss the horrible aspect of conqueror- great- men and the millions of dead that come with the conquests.
Emerson a sublime argument for his conception of ' the great man', of the unique character who makes a gift to Mankind no one else has or can .

3 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars ripoff, August 20, 2002

By 

supastar (brooklyn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Representative Men: Seven Lectures (Paperback)

this is one of my favorite Emerson works. It opens itself up to so much, talking about his theories of influence, precursing everything from queer theory and gender transitivity to Harold Bloom, and it is a poem, too. It's beautiful. It offers his thoughts on the most diverse materials, gets into the most detail on his Hindu readings, gets very brave in "Swedenborg." But ... for a 165-page book? Delbanco's intro is boring and useless. Don't even READ it before you read the book. It'll be like watching an educational video on yeast infections before watching a porno. The index is a kind of neat feature; it's cool to see how many men are mentioned how many times. For example, the most obvious 'omission' in the book, JESUS, is mentioned only 5 times in the book, but he lurks throughout in so many ways. I love the book, but think the edition is a huge ripoff. However, it is difficult to find all these essays in one volume without buying a "complete works" or something, and they are ALL good and work together as a complete 'book,' one essay building off the prior in subject and time, going from B.C. to the nineteenth century, from Plato to Napoleon and Goethe.