American Newness as a Work of Cultural Renewal: Emerson's Idea of Essay

Abstract

This essay tries to suggest a cultural reading of Emerson's essays in the context of symbolic renewal of America, deliberating on the meaning of his difficult style and its deconstructive implication against the backdrop of the Western idea of philosophy and literature. In this critical re-examination, the death of his son in his seminal essay “Experience” (1844) marks a turning point; Emerson's work of mourning represents the impossibility of the philosophical representation itself. This also explains why Emerson's essay becomes itself as an essay against the “aboutness” of the essay. His apparent ease with semantic distractions rests entirely on the essay's resistance to the idea of systematic representation. Alongside of these textual maneuvers, Representative Men shows that Emerson is no longer a romantic naturalist but a living example of what he calls “Man Thinking.” He insists throughout the essays of 1840s that the American “newness,” either political or cultural, depends upon whether Americans can really succeed in critical re-appropriation of the European cultural ideas. For Emerson, culture moves around the central paradox, so to speak: the real newness starts from the renewal of that very newness. And at the centre of this work of renewal Emerson posits literary essay.