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RESEARCH PRODUCT

“The Rhetoric of Nationalism in Emerson’s ‘The American Scholar’”

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This article studies the nationalistic rhetoric in Emerson’s “The American Scholar.” It argues that if the current critical tendency to downplay the essay’s nationalism can be seen as a welcome corrective to certain traditional readings, the address, in fact, includes a significant presence of embedded nationalistic rhetoric that has largely been ignored. The study focuses on Emerson ’s incorporation of the language of expansionism and imperialism, his adoption of an ahistorical perspective and his use of the vocabulary of action, heroism and Anglo-Saxonism to show that both the address’s nationalistic rhetoric and Emerson ’s complicity in the nationalistic ideology of his time are more profound and pervasive than commonly recognized.