...its own terms," echoing Ralph Waldo Emerson's earlier call in The American Scholar (1837): "Each age must write its own books; or rather, each generation...succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this." Creating consensus in the United States after the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the movements for...

...entombment is the moment of institutionalization, the moment when, as he tells us in "The American Scholar," "the sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is transferred to the record" (W, 1: 88). What this record commemorates, as the monument or tomb of the...

...College. Working his collegiate audience, he called for books relevant to a new generation of Americans: "Each age, it is found, must write its own books....succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this."1 But Emerson was far from alone in emphasizing the saving grace of youthfulness. That same year,...

...arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him life; it went out from him truth.... Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness...attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is transferred to the record. The poet chanting was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine,...

...potentially harmful version of the creative process. A "grave mischief" arises, according to Emerson, when "The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is transferred to the record." Given the fact that only the record remains, the course the editors of...

...with it rather than immerse ourselves in the cycle: "Each age, it is found, must write its own books The books of an older period will not fit this. Yet...the act of creation, — the act of thought, — is transferred to the record. The poet chanting was felt to be a divine man; henceforward it is setded,...

...College. Working his collegiate audience, he called for books relevant to a new generation of Americans: "Each age, it is found, must write its own books....succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this." 1 But Emerson was far from alone in emphasizing the saving grace of youthfulness. That same year, as...

...did indeed help educate the American scholar, but nature and action did more. Books were a danger if "the sacredness which attaches to the act of creation — the act of thought — is transferred to the record." When that happens, books about books are then written by (mere) Thinkers,...

...thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age. Each age, it is found,...the act of creation — the act of thought — is transferred to the record. The poet chanting, was felt to be a divine man: henceforth the chant is...

...some tincture of the "local," be fully relevant to the present. "Each age," the passage continues, "must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older generation will not fit this." In "The American Scholar," the same message is directed to the would-be...