Does ‘The American Scholar’ Reflect the Values of the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution? 1

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Every country today differentiates each other through having a unique identity of which the elements are cultures, tradition and religion. Even a country like America was once under the rule of the British. However this did not last as long as it did in India as the people fought back and won what is today called “The War of Independence.” During the time the British ruled various countries they had taught the people under them their ways of conducting every activity in life. In America even after the British were gone the way people lived their lives were still the way they had learned from the British. One such ways of conduct was vividly observable in written literature. Then began the argument that the literature in America should be written differently from how the British would. In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a speech called The American Scholar at Cambridge, Massachusetts to criticize how the Americans still kept alive what they had learned from the British and to remind people the real American culture in every aspect of their lives. Emerson stated that every citizen in America has the right to freedom and to display their own culture. In literature he suggested that scholars can form a new way of writing through nature than memorizing the writings of other authors. The writings of the other authors were present before young scholars in books that limited new ideas. Such history had occurred because of the actions gone wrong by the people in accepting the influences of the Europeans. Emerson was therefore a transcendentalist.

The speech delivered by Emerson indicates the reason why it is important for a man to be free. According to the constitution of U.S (n.d) in the bill of rights every citizen has the right to ...

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... just the scholars but every citizen in America the importance of preserving their own culture with originality in everyone’s ideologies. He has attempted to provide elements through which the new form of literature can grow and it has evidently helped literature in America be more research based and not scholars memorizing from previous texts written by other authors. The American scholar was thus a historic speech that encouraged scholars since to write with freedom encouraging arguments to discover truth for any matter to be discussed.

Works Cited

http://www.history.com/topics/constitution

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/more-subjects/american-government/the-constitution/summary-of-the-constitution

http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111emerson-2.html

http://www.shareyouressays.com/99753/short-summary-of-the-american-scholar-by-ralph-waldo-emerson

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