Emerson and the Climates of History

Eduardo Cadava, Emerson and the Climates of History (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997), xii + 256 pp., $16.95 (paper), $45.00 (cloth).

This engaging and original study of Emerson's ideas and rhetoric in the context of abolitionism and the Civil War is an important contribution to American literary criticism and to the history of ideas. Clearly written and carefully researched, this book is an important contribution to our understanding of a philosopher whose struggle to resolve the dualism of language and physical reality remains central to cultural studies today.

Through a close reading of the essay "Nature" and two poems, "Boston Hymn" and "Voluntaries," Professor Cadava, of Princeton University, argues that Emerson used meteorological metaphors, drawing especially on frost, snow, and the aurora borealis, to comment on language, history, and American politics, specifically slavery, emancipation, and the Civil War.

Although Cadava may attribute a consistency to Emerson's thought that he himself ridiculed, his analysis is subtle and convincing. Beginning with...