Reading Emerson for the structures: The coherence of the essays

Abstract

Emerson's essays have traditionally been considered incoherent; arguments to the contrary have been weakened by their emphasis on such nebulous structural patterns as dialectic, ascending order, and so forth. But close examination of Emerson's rhetoric and his process of revision from journal to lecture to essay shows that he was an artist of the whole as well as parts. He simultaneously provides and conceals structure.