About This Week: Emerson's "The American Scholar" and the Big Picture

Originally, Emerson write the essay, "The American Scholar," as a speech for Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge. The year was 1837; that is, it was just fifty years since America adopted it current Constitution in 1787.  America was a very young country.  It was rapidly expanding, but it still looked to Europe for most of its culture and intellectual tradition. 

In part, this continued dependence on Europe and, in specific, England as the primary source of our culture was what Emerson was reacting to.  America was just at the tipping point in terms of being able to support professional authors.  Publishing was just coming out of the hand presses and moving toward machine production.  Most important, paper was, for the first time in history, relatively cheap.  The nation and the world was primed for cheap newspapers and a mass market for books and ideas.

Since books, printing, and writing were the only means in existence for easily capturing entertainment.  Remember, this was well before Edison's invention of the phonograph or the advent of radio.  This moment when all came together to produce relatively cheap books, which everyone could afford was an important moment.  Equally important, America had a decision to make. It was prior to international copyright, and most publishers in America could by a single book in England and then reprint it in America without paying the author or the original publisher.  This made European books much cheaper to publish, because publishers didn't have to pay what they had to pay American authors, who were protected by copyright. 

"The American Scholar" has been called America's intellectual and cultural Declaration of Independence.  In part, this is true because Emerson was calling on the students to whom he was speaking in his address to become the thinkers and writers American needed to make a cultural break with England in the same way it had made a political break in 1776.  The problem was a hard one.  How does one go about establishing a new national intellectual tradition and a new culture?  This is not a problem which often presents itself.  The other reason Emerson's essay is considered a milestone is that he lays out a road map for what and how his audience needs to study and write about to create a distinctly American culture.