Reading Emerson
Four SessionsA literary course for adult readers and writers · taught by James F. Mulhern
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Important Information & Course Materials▾
An Invitation▾
Ralph Waldo Emerson made American thought possible. Before Emerson, an American writer was a provincial who copied English models. After Emerson, an American writer had permission to trust the news of the self, to read nature as scripture, and to distrust anything received on authority. That permission changed everything.
This four-session workshop reads four Emerson essays slowly — the way Emerson himself would have wanted them read, aloud, with pauses for thought and for disagreement. We take one essay per session. We read paragraphs, not summaries. We pay attention to the sentences — because in Emerson the sentence is the unit of thought, and each one is a machine designed to change the reader’s mind mid-sentence.
The course is for adult readers who have always meant to read Emerson, or who read him in school and want a second, wiser encounter. No previous reading is required.
What This Course Is▾
- A four-session close-reading workshop
- One essay per session, all Emerson, all available free online
- Ninety minutes per session, discussion-based, no lecture
- Non-graded, non-competitive, open to any adult reader
- In person or on Zoom, adaptable to any partner venue’s calendar
What This Course Is Not▾
- Not a survey of American Transcendentalism (though the movement is present in every session)
- Not a biography course (Emerson’s life is background, not subject)
- Not a philosophy course in the technical sense (though we read philosophically)
About the Instructor▾
James F. Mulhern is a Kirkus-starred novelist, Oxford Writing Fellow, and Professor Emeritus of English with more than thirty years of college classroom teaching. Emerson has been a lifelong companion and a fixture of his American Literature surveys. His novel Give Them Unquiet Dreams received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and was named a Kirkus Best Book of 2019.
Course Details▾
- Instructor: James F. Mulhern
- Location: in person or on Zoom
- Format: Weekly, 90 minutes per session
- Duration: 4 weeks
- Cost: Contact for current terms
- Enrollment: Open to all adults; no application required
- Grading: None
- Required texts: None to purchase. All essays are free and linked in this document.
- Materials to bring: This document (printed or on your phone/tablet), something to write with
What to Expect Each Week▾
Each session follows the same shape:
- Read a passage aloud — we start with a paragraph from the essay
- First response — what struck each of us
- Close reading — sentence by sentence through the essay’s most compressed section
- The Emerson question — what does the essay ask of us as readers, as citizens, as Americans?
- Craft takeaway — one sentence pattern or move to carry away
Readings▾
All texts are available free online. Every session links to a public-domain source. No book purchase is required.
A Companion Volume▾
Coming soon — an annotated Emerson reader with James F. Mulhern’s marginal notes.
A Few Promises▾
- Every session begins on time and ends on time.
- Every discussion is generous. Nothing said in the room leaves it.
- No one is asked to speak. Silence is a legitimate contribution.
- The reading is short enough for any busy reader to finish before the session.
A Few Asks▾
- Read the essay before the session. Ninety minutes is not enough to read and discuss.
- Bring the printed or digital text. We refer to specific passages constantly.
- Come to as many sessions as you can. Each session builds on the last.
Registration▾
To register or bring this course to a partner venue, please email jamesfmulhern@gmail.com. The course can be delivered as a four-session workshop, a two-day weekend intensive, or four evening lectures in sequence.
About the Use of These Materials▾
These materials — course descriptions, reading lists, syllabi, discussion questions, session pages, and prompts — were written and designed by James F. Mulhern for Silver Current Press. Readers are welcome to read, print, share, and quote them for personal use and study.
Teachers, program directors, and institutions who would like to use any of this material in a classroom, syllabus, publication, or paid program are asked to write first — a short email is enough. The answer will almost always be a warm yes, with a note on attribution. Please contact Professor Mulhern at [email protected].
The Sessions▾
Session 1 — "Nature" (1836)
Focus: Emerson’s first book — the founding manifesto of American Transcendentalism. Nature is not scenery. Nature is scripture. And the reader who knows how to read it becomes something new.
Main Points of the Lesson
- Emerson’s first paragraph is a demand. “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” That sentence launches a literature.
- The essay is a spiral, not an argument. Emerson does not prove. He returns and returns, seeing more each time.
- Nature is a dictionary. Every natural fact stands for a spiritual fact. This is the whole of Transcendentalist reading.
- The transparent eyeball passage. The essay’s most famous moment — and its most misread. Emerson is not describing an experience. He is proposing a mode of being.
- Emerson writes to unsettle. Every paragraph you agree with is a paragraph you have not yet read carefully.
Reading
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836) — Project Gutenberg
- Focus for our first pass: the Introduction and Chapter I (“Nature”). If time, read on.
Critical Reception
- Ralph Waldo Emerson — Poetry Foundation biographical entry — for background on Emerson and his moment.
In-Class Practice
Read the “transparent eyeball” paragraph aloud. Then read it a second time, but rewrite it as a plain description of a walk in the woods. What does Emerson gain by refusing plainness? (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- Read the opening paragraph aloud. What is Emerson asking his reader to give up?
- What does “an original relation to the universe” mean? What would it look like in your own life?
- Emerson’s sentences often break the grammar we were taught. Find one that surprises you. Why does it work?
- Do you resist the transparent eyeball passage? Why? What in it feels overreaching, and what feels earned?
- If you had to translate “Nature is symbol of spirit” for a friend who has not read the essay, what would you say?
Homework
Read the last chapter, “Prospects.” Bring one sentence that stopped you cold.
Session 2 — "Self-Reliance" (1841)
Focus: The essay every American has heard of and few Americans have read carefully. Trust yourself. Believe your own thought. What is popular is often what is dead. This is Emerson at his most quotable — and his most difficult.
Main Points of the Lesson
- “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” Not comfort. A summons.
- A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The most famous sentence Emerson wrote — and often misused. Read the whole paragraph.
- Emerson attacks conformity from the inside. He is not the outsider criticizing the crowd. He is the crowd criticizing itself.
- The essay makes democracy harder. Emerson tells you that fitting in is spiritual failure. This is not what most people want to hear.
- Emerson’s individualism is not selfish. It is what he thinks makes community possible in the first place. Read the ending.
Reading
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (1841) — Project Gutenberg (in Essays: First Series)
In-Class Practice
Choose one sentence from the essay that you disagree with. Rewrite it so that you can agree with it. What changed? What did Emerson mean that your rewrite refuses to mean? (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- Read the paragraph containing “A foolish consistency…” aloud. What is the whole sentence really saying?
- Is “Self-Reliance” a democratic essay or an anti-democratic one? Make the case both ways.
- Emerson writes: “Envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide.” What does that pair of sentences do to a reader?
- Where in the essay does Emerson soften? Is the softening a weakness or a hidden strength?
- Whom has this essay been used against? Whom has it been used to defend? Are those the same people?
Homework
Look at “The Over-Soul” — read the first two pages. Bring a question.
Session 3 — "The American Scholar" (1837)
Focus: Delivered as a Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard, this essay was called by Oliver Wendell Holmes “our intellectual Declaration of Independence.” An American thinker’s declaration of independence from European authority — and a diagnosis of what makes education real.
Main Points of the Lesson
- The essay defines a scholar in three ways: by nature, by books, by action. All three, or the scholar is not whole.
- Books are a resource, not an authority. “Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given.” Emerson is warning us.
- Action makes thought possible. A thinker who does not live cannot think. This is Emerson’s argument, and it is the through-line to Thoreau’s Walden.
- The scholar’s duty is to lift up his contemporaries. Not to withdraw from the age but to see it clearly and name it truly.
- The last paragraphs prophesy an American literature. Read them slowly. They came true.
Reading
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” (1837) — Project Gutenberg (Complete Works, Vol 1)
In-Class Practice
Emerson names three influences on the scholar: nature, books, and action. Rank them for yourself. Which has shaped you most? Which do you most need more of? (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- Why does Emerson deliver this to Harvard’s most decorated graduates? What is the effect of the venue on the argument?
- What does Emerson mean by “the sluggard intellect of this continent”? Is that America? Or is it something in America?
- Emerson’s phrase “man thinking” — as opposed to “a mere thinker” — what does he mean by that difference?
- Where in the essay does Emerson praise reading? Where does he warn against it? Are those consistent?
- The essay is 187 years old. Which sentence do you find newest today?
Homework
Bring a piece of writing (yours or someone else’s) that you think Emerson would praise. Bring one you think he would attack.
Session 4 — "Circles" (1841)
Focus: Emerson’s most philosophically radical essay — the one that dismantles every conclusion the previous essays reached. “The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end.” Emerson at his most ecstatic, and his most demanding.
Main Points of the Lesson
- Every settled truth is a smaller circle around a larger one. The essay is an assault on complacency of any kind.
- Emerson revises Emerson. “There is no outside, no enclosing wall, no circumference to us.” The teacher of Self-Reliance now asks: reliance on which self?
- The essay’s rhythm is spiraling. Read paragraph five aloud. Then paragraph twelve. Then the last paragraph. Each one is a wider circle than the last.
- Emerson gives permission to change your mind. In a culture that punishes reversal, this essay is a lifeline.
- The last paragraph turns the whole essay on its head. Emerson calls himself an “experimenter” and refuses to be identified with anything he has said. This is Emerson’s greatest move.
Reading
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles” (1841) — Project Gutenberg (Essays: First Series)
In-Class Practice
Take a belief you have held for a long time. Write a paragraph in Emerson’s voice arguing why the next larger circle around that belief will require you to give it up. (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- Read the first paragraph. What is the essay’s central image, and how does it govern the whole essay?
- Emerson writes: “I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back.” Do you believe him? Should we?
- How does “Circles” complicate “Self-Reliance”? What in one essay makes the other necessary?
- Emerson calls himself an experimenter. What is the ethical status of an experimenter?
- Which of the four essays we have read — Nature, Self-Reliance, The American Scholar, Circles — is closest to how Emerson wanted to be read?
Homework
None. Instead: read any Emerson essay we have not covered. He will surprise you.