Reading Response Prompts
 

These prompts are meant to get you thinking about what you have read, and to help focus your thoughts for your reading responses. You can respond to any one of them, or, if you have another idea you would rather explore, you are free to write about that instead. Do not, however, attempt to answer multiple prompts for any assignment. If you choose to pursue an idea of your own or are not writing a response that day, you should still spend at least a few minutes thinking about each of the prompts in preparation for class. For more information, review the listserv assignment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”

What is the significance of the title “Nature”? Early in this essay, Emerson opposes Nature to the Soul. That was not the conventional opposition in Emerson’s time, nor is it the opposition people would conventionally make now. Today, people would more likely contrast nature to civilization, to art, or even to humanity. Consider the implications of the way Emerson divides all of existence into these two categories.

Given that, for Emerson, the category of Nature includes the entire material universe, this essay’s implications are vast. How would seeing the world as Emerson does affect one’s understanding of art (including literature), of society both personal and general (relationships with other individuals and relationships with the mass of other human beings), of politics and government, of science and knowledge, of religion, or of any other aspect of existence? Focus on just one.

Rhetorically, Emerson makes use of a great number of references to and direct quotations from other sources — history, mythology, the Bible, philosophy, mysticism, science, and literature. How do these references and quotations, both individually and collectively, affect his argument?

Are the principles Emerson espouses in this essay practical? If you were to decide to follow them, how would you go about it? How can one live an Emersonian life? What does living that kind of life offer us?

 
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