...street. . .the news of the boat. . .the glance of the eye. . .the shop, the plough and ledger . . . We have listened too long to the courtly muses of...is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. . .we will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.' Telescoped...

...and stands in a "state of virtual hostility" to American society. Emerson lamented in his words that "public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat" so that there was "no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant." I want to conclude by saying...

...Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. . . . The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. And he had claimed in no uncertain terms: "Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning...

...address at Harvard in 1837, "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe" and lamented that "The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame," he was only saying what scores of American commencement speakers had said before. The United States...

...Society articulated most of the concerns, sometimes in more or less the same terms, of later artists: "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of...breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complacent." Timid, imitative, tame, decent, indolent, complacent. It takes no great powers of divination...

...but many. Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The American Scholar" ushers in the next stage of decolonization: "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of...is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. . . . What is the remedy?" (70-71). Rephrased, once we are no longer colonials, how do we become Americans?...

...Lebensordnung zusprach (2). 116 5. »Our Country and Our Culture«: Die Rückbesinnung auf »Amerika< We have listened too long to the courtly muses of...is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Ralph Waldo Emerson The American Scholar Immer dann, wenn sich Veränderungen im Kreise der New York...

...independence." But Emerson's Address also contains this estimate of contemporary American society: "Public and private avarice make the air we breathe...country taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." (Contemporary British society was little better, as Americans learned from reading Carlyle.) The young...

...intent of the essay disclosed, that "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe" and thus "The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame" (W 1: 114). But of course and silently, it is the European idolizing of the past and its importation...

...transcendentalist ideal. "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe," Emerson had written; "the spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame." Emerson urged the young American "to plant himself indominable on his instincts," and by these alone...