Paired Texts

Song of Myself and I Sing the Body Electric

These two poems are from a collection titled Leaves of Grass, which a little-known poet named Walt Whitman self-published and sent to Emerson in 1855. Impressed, Emerson wrote back to Whitman, praising his “free brave thought” in a letter that jumpstarted the young poet’s literary career. 

Other Student Resources

Ralph Waldo Emerson

This video, produced by theschooloflife.com, provides a brief overview of Emerson’s life, philosophy, and his role as the “Father of American Literature” and transcendentalism.

Transcendentalism and the Hudson River School of Art

Heimler’s History presents a short video that traces the growth of American literature from romanticism to transcendentalism along with parallel developments in American landscape painting.

Allegory of the Cave

A brief tutorial on Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave,” from the University of Washington. Plato created this allegory to illustrate his theory of “Forms,” with which Emerson was familiar and which he drew upon to explain how nature is only a shadow of universal truth or spirit.

'Nature-Deficit Disorder' is Really a Thing

This June 2020 New York Times article offers anecdotal evidence from parents to corroborate Richard Louv’s claims in Last Child in the Woods (2005) that modern-day children are suffering psychologically and physiologically from a lack of nature in their lives.