...enslavement to culture. "Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love," he wrote in "Self-Reliance." "Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it...counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines."6 Emerson's project, in simple terms, was to seed evangelicalism with romanticism: push beyond...

...nature"; "... the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it"; "I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me" (E, 262). In these assertions, as in the most polemical passages of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, which I...

...view of the individual, integration is an ethic of self-transformation — an Emersonian summons to "shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me." It teaches a rejection of one's origins and a contempt for those parts of the self that resist transformation....

...but, I believe, did not understand Polonius's paradox. One of his lines is particularly revealing: The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction...mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. In fairness to Emerson, that statement is not in context with another part of his essay: I shall endeavour...

...this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is...goodness must have some edge to it — else it is none. (CW, 2:30) Throughout the essay Emerson insists on the need for individuals to redeem themselves first;...

...self-reliant Aunt Debby anticipates Emerson's "Self-Reliant" man, who leaves the domestic scene on a "whim": "I shun father and mother and wife and brother when...would write on the lintels of the doorpost, Whim."* The material, psychological, and social functions of marriage for women are central to the novel. Ellen...

...total devotion to his work, which prevented him from giving more of his time to Sophia and Geddes. "I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me," Emerson had proclaimed in "Self-Reliance," words that Mumford himself might have written. And like...

...emerges as a dangerous distraction from the self-involvement that genius requires. Emerson writes, "I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. . . . Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company" (30). And above all, as the...

...violent shunning, whereas Emerson's and Thoreau's worlds begin with or after the shunning of others ("I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me") and typically depict the "I" just beside itself. The interest of the connection is that all undertake...

...this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is...be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine oflove, when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls...