Abstract

Emerson's poetry since his publication of Poems in 1847 has been misevaluated, underrated, and to a large extent overlooked by critics. My dissertation endeavors to view Emerson's poems in the mode of his visionary poetics, so that Emerson's aesthetics and verse may be more thoroughly appreciated, and more effectively appraised. The dissertation addresses this argument by foregrounding Emerson's aesthetics in his changing view of theology in the early 1830's, and tracing his new First Philosophy to its epistemological extensions in his poetics and verse. ;The first chapter provides an overview of criticism concerning Emerson's poetry to the modern period. The second chapter discusses the growth of Emerson's First Philosophy and visionary poetics. Chapter three analyzes Emerson's representative early poems that attempt visionary capacity. The fourth chapter, in four poems from the middle period, considers Emerson's aesthetic of the kairos, or breakthrough of the veil of the phenomenal/nominal, showing the limitations of Emerson's aesthetic to reach through to an epiphany. Chapter five examines Emerson's most ambitious poem, "The Sphinx," finding it also unable to engage the kairos, despite its innovative apocalyptic poetics. The final chapter follows the descent of Emerson's optative mood concerning visionary poetics; the chapter then concludes by tracing this aesthetic in poets who followed Emerson to the present. ;The dissertation argues for a re-evaluation of Emerson as a poet original and innovative in philosophy and form, and for a rethinking of his poetry as aesthetically avantgarde and fundamentally influential to poets following him