Emerson's Sublime Science

Emerson''s Sublime Science explores relationships among Emerson''s poetics, theory of the sublime, and engagement with electromagnetism. The book illustrates how Davy''s chemistry and Faraday''s physics revealed to Emerson a sublime universe in which matter is boundless electrical force. It argues that Emerson translated this discovery into a sublime writing style crafted to galvanize readers with the insight that matter is energy. In illuminating Emerson''s project, this study also uncovers connections among British Romanticism, American Romanticism, and nineteenth-century science.