Freedom and Fate: An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson

by Stephen E. Whicher

0 ratings • 0 reviews • 0 shelved
Book cover for Freedom and Fate

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

Stephen Whicher's Freedom and Fate begins with a tribute to Ralph Rusk's monumental biography The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, acknowledging its supremacy as a factual telling of Emerson's life that cannot be surpassed. Whicher's book aims to be a complement to the painstakingly researched outer life of Emerson by focusing on the great sage's inner life--not just his intellectual biography but the very nature of his thinking.

Whicher stresses the life of "spectator-ship" that the young Emerson, perpetually ill as he turned out to be, was condemned to. His writings, especially his private thoughts recorded in his journals, document the ebb and flow of his spirit, alternatively listless and resolute.

  • ISBN13 9781512820195
  • Publish Date 1 January 1953
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint University of Pennsylvania Press