Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a philosopher and transcendentalist of the 19th century, composing controversial, philosophical and religious essays in order to inform people. Emerson was a strong influence on other personalities of his time, including American figures such as; “Henry Thoreau” and “Walt Whitman”. “Emerson’s father (William Emerson) influenced the good taste of Emerson’s essays due to he was a man of the church.” William died because of a stomach cancer just two weeks before Ralph Waldo fulfilled eight years old. This death leads the family to an edge of poverty and a life of limited luxuries. That’s the point when Emerson’s career began. “His mother managed so that all of her children could get accepted into Harvard University with scholarships.” There was Ralph's stop when he was only fourteen years old. In Harvard College he was an apprentice under the president of the constitution. The task was to accuse his colleagues in criminal activity letting the ‘faculty’ know. Meanwhile, Emerson began keeping a list of books he had read and started a journal in a series of notebooks that would be called ‘World Wide’. Emerson performed odd jobs to cover his school expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and occasionally working as a teacher with his uncle Samuel in Waltham, Massachusetts. He began his famous Journal, an anthology and patchwork of passages that surprised and astonished his readers with their comments, ended up reaching 182 volumes. In his senior year at Harvard, Emerson decided to take his middle name as Waldo. He attended class Poetry; as usual, and presented an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, a month before his official graduation. On August 29, 1821, when he was 18 not noted as a student he...

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...e had erotic thoughts about several men. During his student years at Harvard, he was attracted by a young man named Martin Gay about him Emerson wrote poetry with recharged sexuality thoughts. He also had several affairs with women throughout his life, ignoring his wives.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is well known as an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the 19th century. Writing controversial, philosophical and religious essays the ones that got him in trouble quite often by getting really harsh critics from some other famous writers of his time. Graduating from Harvard with two published essays while his life in college, he developed a lecturer career for so many years after his graduation.

The American transcendentalism that Emerson proposed is part of the fundamental transcendentalism of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.