Emerson and the Refounding of America

Abstract

Attempts to contribute to the current debate over Emerson’s dilemma as a public intellectual increasingly, and somewhat reluctantly, drawn into what he himself calls “turmoils of the earth” in the essay “Experience.” Synthesizes recent work by Len Gougeon, Stanley Cavell, T. Gregory Garvey, Gustaaf Van Cromphout, Eduardo Cadava, and others to refocus attention on Emerson’s concern for the refining of political rhetoric in the service of a reconstituted notion of “America” as an ideal polity.