(Download) "Poetic Portals: Emerson's Essay Epigraphs." by Nineteenth-Century Prose # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

April 15, 2021

eBook details

Title: Poetic Portals: Emerson's Essay Epigraphs.
Author : Nineteenth-Century Prose
Release Date : January 22, 2003
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
Pages : * pages
Size : 213 KB

Description

In a boldly unconventional structure, original verse epigraphs frequently preface Emerson's essays. Readers, however, most often ignore the epigraphs, and scholarship has given them virtually no extended consideration. I explore the generic and theoretical significance of these largely neglected threshold poems. By disregarding them, we both lose the pleasure of engaging the poetry and elide perspectives crucial to the prose that follows. The epigraphs resonate with the playful and arch rejoinder in "Self-Reliance," "I would write on the lintels of the doorpost, Whim.'" Similarly replacing scriptural text, the words of God, and the blood of the lamb, the epigraphs combine sacrality and joviality as whimsical yet profound pre-liminary conundrums. Attention to them is fundamental for our understanding relationships among Emerson's various texts and voices. In the epigraphs, I suggest, Emerson's poetry becomes the vital "Whim" upon the lintel of his prose. **********