This is the definitive anthology on Americas premier man of lettersRalph Waldo Emerson. * Cornel West, Class of 1943 University Professor of Professor, Princeton University, USA * Quite apart from the usefulness of having all these important essays handy, readers may also toy with this simple question: when writing about a writers work, over the years, have critics gotten better or have they gotten worse? * William H. Gass, David May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St Louis, USA * David LaRocca's Estimating Emerson is an essential anthology of criticism. Every lover of Emerson will be tempted to read deeply in this volume, which offers a rich spectrum of reactions to the Emersonian genius, from Emerson's own day to the present. It's not just a delightful book, but a necessary one. * David Mikics, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of English, University of Houston, USA, and Editor of The Annotated Emerson * LaRoccas anthology, Estimating Emerson, offers a unique invitation to essential knowledge for anybody interested in Americas sense of itself for the better part of the last two centuries. In our literary and philosophical culture Emersons writings and reputation have cast the longest shadow. How Emerson is perceived amounts to the most direct route to who we are or who we wish, or seem, to be. Even those who want to reject Emersons legacy will welcome this volume since it gathers a decisive quorum of the most significant anti-Emersonian voices as well as the most enthusiastic and the most discerning. The inheritability of this unavoidable patrimony poses challenges of reading not only Emersons remarkable writing. It also entails reading the writing of his remarkable readers who have created many memorable versions of the so-called sage or Lucifer of Concord, depending on whom you consultPoe or Hawthorne, Updike or Cavell, among many others. LaRocca has gathered together the most comprehensive one-volume collection of first-rate writers responding to Emerson since such reckonings became necessary. * Lawrence F. Rhu, Professor of English, University of South Carolina, USA * This is a GREAT idea, and it is amazing to me that no such book already exists! It is a much needed anthology, and will be welcome for those who want to get a sense, in a single volume, of the breadth and profundity of Emersons influence over the last 170 years, and also to defamliarize the 'Sage of Concord' as an exclusively New England personage. The writings LaRocca has assembled here show what an international figure Emerson was. Anybody who cares about literature on any level ought to be struck by, and interested in, this. * Paul Grimstad, Assistant Professor of English, Yale University, USA * I find it especially valuable that LaRocca has chosen a wide array of writers within and outside U.S. borders. Now that the humanities are going global, it is especially timely to foreground the transnational connections between American writers (whether canonical or not) and writers beyond its borders. In this sense, it is obvious that LaRocca knows Emerson criticism in depth: not only has he selected these essays using a convincing criterion about Emersons relevance in the English-speaking world (which is the subject of the 1834-60 section); he has also constructed a volume that speaks for Emersons importance beyond the American background (the rest of the sections include essays by Lawrence, Proust, Musil, Maeterlinck, Borges, etc.). In addition, some of the essays in the collection--such as those by Elizabeth Peabody, Amos Bronson Alcott, Robert Frost or Harold Bloom (especially Mr. America)are very hard to find today, which makes this collection is an invaluable tool for anyone interested not only in Emerson scholarship but in the literary culture of the American Renaissance in general. * Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso, Associate Professor of English and American Literature, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain * I cannot think of a more useful and necessary resource for reading about and especially teaching Emersons complex but crucial essays than Estimating Emerson: An Anthology of Criticism from Carlyle to Cavell. * Richard Deming, Lecturer in English, Yale University, USA * LaRocca's Estimating Emerson: An Anthology of Criticism from Carlyle to Cavell is both very exciting and sorely needed. The pieces selected for inclusion, as many know, are all scattered hither and yon, and have been reproduced only intermittently or not at all. Yet together they would be a valuable resource for scholars, their students, and other readers of Emerson interested in his reception over the decades. In fact, the question of Emerson's receptionas for his close reader Nietzscheis perhaps the question in assessing this writer's achievement and in coming to see what demands he places on his own writing and on the act of reading. I see LaRocca's anthology as helping to reveal to readers the power of Emerson's prosenot only on the page but for its first auditors; not only for those who knew Emerson as a neighbor but for those meeting his prose from across the Atlantic, even in translation. The organization of the volume, divided by consecutive scores of years, shows the astonishingly consistent engagement with Emerson since his own day, even as individual writers clash in their views across and even within the decades. Estimating Emerson looks to be an anthology that easily will find a place in the classroom for courses in American literature, American studies, and American philosophy. * William Day, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Le Moyne College, USA * This is one well-condensed and skillfully explained volume with more than 170 years of analytical commentary on Emerson. Given their illustrious intellectual pedigrees and histories of influence, 67 writers have composed work on Emerson: not just any writers, but some of the finest and most celebrated contributors to prose in the last few centuries. [ ...] Estimating Emerson reveals a long, but not exhaustive span from classical to contemporary views, which are not only from America, but also Great Britain, Europe and Latin America. The absolute magnitude and miscellany of comments creates a kind of consensus, across time, of Emersons enduring significance. * PSNews, Australia *
