EMERSON, Ralph Waldo. - American thinker and writer, born in Boston on 25 May 1803 into a Puritan family, died in Concord on 25 April 1882. He studied at Harvard. He became a Unitarian minister; from 1827 he was a famous preacher and pastor. Later (1832), in accordance with his critical-philosophical ideas, he withdrew from pastoral activity. In 1833 he made his first trip to Europe; upon returning to America, in 1836 he published his first essay, *Nature*: an obscure and vague message for an American spiritual renewal. He insisted on this in 1837 with *The American Scholar*: a clamorous appeal to break away from European tradition. In 1838, in a lecture, he openly opposed Christianity, with which he definitively broke. In 1841–44 he published the *Essays*, achieving international fame. He played a leading role in American Transcendentalism, a broad movement of renewal.
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO
