ABSTRACT
The huge, virtually endless American continent is the mysterious force against which Ralph Waldo Emerson measures the fixed, finite, island prison, the “Gibraltar of propriety,” which is England. Emerson’s metaphoric confrontation between England and America, which represents the true symbolic thrust of English Traits, culminates most forcefully and appropriately in the fourth chapter from the end, entitled “Stonehenge.” The alert reader can discover, and take much pleasure in discovering, remarkable verbal strategies, metaphoric patterns, repetitions and developments of sound, sense, and image throughout Emerson’s writing. An analogous indication of discouragement in Emerson’s optimistic philosophy may be seen in the fortunes of another central metaphor—that of the ascending spiral or upward-pointing staircase. Most Emersonians would probably agree that to redeem Emerson by resorting to what Newton Arvin calls a “cant of pessimism” is to do him a disservice. Emerson’s real genius, however, lies in the business of the snowstorm.
