SOURCE: "Holmes's Emerson and the Conservative Critique of Realism," in South Atlantic Review, Vol. 59, No. 1, January, 1994, pp. 107-25.

In the following essay, Gougeon examines Holmes's attempt in his biography, Ralph Waldo Emerson, to make Emerson into an icon of cultural conservatism.

The controversy generated by the emergence of American realism and naturalism in the post-Civil War period affected not only the criticism directed toward contemporary representatives of the movement but also critical interpretations of the works of previously established and highly regarded authors. Not surprisingly, in some cases deliberate efforts were made by opposing camps to appropriate the authority of past idols in order to reinforce arguments for or against the new realism and naturalism. Nowhere is evidence of this historic literary controversy more apparent than in the critical discussions of Ralph Waldo Emerson that appeared at this time. The following narrative documents the redoubtable efforts of Oliver...