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This work prizes "blood-warm" writing about common things such as "The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan" over the cold and remote style of Pope, Johnson, and Gibbon. It attacks the "mischievous notion" that "the world was finished a long time ago," instead claiming that great thinkers mold the perception of nature, asserting "wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table." This work argues that the precepts "Know thyself" and "study nature" are really one maxim, and calls nature, books, and action the three main influences on the its central figure. This speech begins by telling a fable about Man being divided into many different parts, and argues that the right state of the title figure is "Man thinking." It ends by claiming "we have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe," causing Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to call this speech a "literary declaration of independence." For 10 points, name this speech delivered to the Phi Beta Kappa society of Harvard in 1837 by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which called for an original national literature.
This work prizes "blood-warm" writing about common things such as "The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan" over the cold and remote style of Pope, Johnson, and Gibbon.
"The American Scholar"