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Full Description
This study demonstrates that there is a substantial philosphical congeniality between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Victor Hugo which has so far gone unnoticed. It shows many striking affinities, offering a fresh perspective on both authors. It examines how both Emerson's and Hugo's ideas and perceptions grew out of 19th-century Western ideology, as well as their personal psycho-physiological experiences of the world. In arguing for an understanding of Hugo as a Gallic Transcendentalist, this comparative study corrects one popular image of the French writer, that of a moody, eccentric megalomaniac and superficial trifler. Beginning with a lively cultural-studies analysis of both writers' personal as well as socio-historical backgrounds, it examines specific, authentic 19th-century articles from French and American journals in order to shed light on what critics had to say about the foreign poet. There is also a collection and analysis of Emerson's never-written "French traits", Emerson's perceptions of the French as a nation as expressed in his journal entries. The study then gives a detailed analysis of Emerson's and Hugo's main affinity - their Transcendentalist cosmology.
Contents
Intersecting universes - Emerson, Hugo and the "Zeitgest" of 19th-century America and France; "if I had a barn-fowl ... I should name him France" - Emerson's romantic France; "the marriage of thoughts and things" - the romantic theory of correspondence in the poet in Emerson and Hugo; "the religion of love" - Emerson's and Hugo's pantheistic poetics of love; conclusion; appendix.
