Ralph Waldo Emerson is generally considered one of the most influential writers of the American Renaissance. He is the father of the philosophical movement Transcendentalism, that is to say the American equivalent of the European movement Romanticism. During his career, Emerson wrote several essays and gave more than 1,500 lectures throughout the United States. Although his writings had a significant impact on American authors of subsequent generations, Emerson earned his living and popularity as a lecturer. Oratory is indeed Emerson's main strength, as well as the subject he further analyzes in his works. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In his essays and journal, Emerson acknowledges that the speech was not simply an exposition of one person's opinion; rather, successful speech produces a synthesis between speaker and listener that reveals a mutual identity. According to literature professor Granville Ganter, “Emerson's sense of successful oratory is closely linked to the concept of abandonment, a word he associates with oracular genius” (270). Ganter states that Emerson believed that everyone had the qualities to be a successful speaker, but that not everyone goes through enough hardship to develop their skills. Both in his essay “Self-Reliance” and his speech “The American Scholars,” Emerson asserts that scholars and orators must endure poverty, boredom, adversity, and loneliness in order to progress. In his speech "The American Scholar," Emerson said: "But he, in his private observatory, cataloging the dark and nebulous stars of the human mind, which no man hitherto thought of as such, — observing days and months sometimes for a few moments. facts; still correcting his old records, - must give up display and immediate fame. During the long period of his preparation, he often had to demonstrate ignorance and inertia in the popular arts, attracting the contempt of capable men who sidelined him. For a long time he must stammer in his speech; often renounce the living for the dead. Worse still, he has to accept – how many times! — poverty and loneliness. (540) Emerson highlights the difficulties that seekers may encounter on their journey, and he emphasizes the importance of succumbing to ignorance and laziness to understand a person's potential and limitations. It is indeed not possible to evolve without knowing how much we are capable of learning. Furthermore, Emerson emphasizes that scholars and speakers should be wary of immediate success, since this does not necessarily equate to knowledge and mastery. On the contrary, after a life of deprivation and misfortune, intellectuals become aware of their skills. For Emerson, however, knowledge is not something that men can acquire solely from the external world and experience, but is an innate characteristic. According to the philosopher Philip Kitcher, Emerson was influenced by the Kantian idea of ​​“a priori knowledge” (4). In fact, Emerson incorporated Kant's philosophy into his own, linking the idea of ​​a priori knowledge to the idea that "words by themselves refer to a material object, but ideas transcend the physical word." Yet until ideas are expressed in concrete language, they remain a meaningless abstraction. […] Metaphor merges the material and the ideal, unifying and giving meaning to experience” (Berlin 526). Thus, if words express a concrete object and metaphors combine thephysical and metaphysical, the speaker's task increases its value. The speaker must use metaphors to express what cannot be known otherwise, thereby simplifying the understanding of reality. Emerson, however, argues that the orator's work is so specific that the public speaker should accommodate other works so as not to lose touch with reality. In the American Scholar speech, Emerson explains this concept using an extended metaphor by saying: “In this division of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. He is in the right state, the Thinking Man. In the degenerate state, when he is a victim of society, he tends to become a simple thinker or, even worse, a parrot of the thoughts of others. » (537). Ideas are innate, but they can only be developed after contact with the outside world, so it is up to the speaker to let that idea flourish. To let ideas flourish, the speaker must do physical work. Yet Emerson claims that speakers, instead of focusing on discovering new concepts, only repeat and rephrase other people's harsh ones. Even though Emerson was too critical of his contemporary lack of originality, he was truly fascinated by the figure of Edward Taylor. Taylor was an English clergyman, poet, and physician who emigrated from England to the United States in 1668; he was famous for his sermons which Emerson defined as the perfect example of an almost perfect speech (Stanford). Emerson had the opportunity to listen to a speech by Taylor on temperance on March 13, 1837, the same year that Emerson himself gave his greatest public speech (Oliver). On this occasion, Emerson wrote in his diary that Taylor had brought the dynamics of his personality and creativity into a "harmonious relationship" with his audience (22). He was amazed by Taylor's ability to improvise his speech and construct a perfect speech without using a set method. Taylor's talent actually lay in the connection he created with the audience. He so captivated audiences that Emerson described him as an “instinctive creature whose illustration keeps us awake” (25). Emerson also credits Taylor with the ability to observe analogies between nature and the mind. In his journal, he writes that Taylor used the material world to seek to understand the spiritual world, making the spiritual world more understandable to the faithful (27). For Emerson, man can only be free when he is guided in his action by his conscience reached to the understanding of the spiritual world, and "the job of the preacher-orator is to bring his audience to a state of consciousness” (Ray). Nevertheless, Taylor's main quality, and one that Emerson recognized as the fundamental characteristic that a perfect orator should have, was the ability to use knowledge inherited from the "thinking man" of the past and integrate it with his own understanding. . criticized his contemporaries for imitating other works without contributing to the creation of new ideas. In the American Scholar speech, in fact, he warned Harvard students against the danger that books represented for them and for their imagination. He argued that books should be a source of inspiration and that scholars and speakers should never take them as absolute truth. In his speech, Emerson said: “The only thing of value in the world is the active soul. This is what every man has the right to; every man contains this within him, although in almost all men it is obstructed and yet unborn. The active soul sees absolute truth; and expresses the truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege of a favorite here and there, but the good health of every man. In his. (540). 215–225.