This is part one in a series of three lectures of the Ruskin Art Club’s ongoing series of presentations on Ruskin in America.
John Ruskin and Ralph Waldo Emerson are among the ‘representative men’ of the Victorian period. Considered prophets, sages, and gospel-makers in their own day, they have by now assumed a place alongside the sort of Great Men whom they esteemed. Today, our debates about education, nature, and labor echo with Ruskinian and Emersonian notions, from self-culture and self-reliance to mutuality and the value of work. We continue to face many of the problems with which they wrestled and to seek answers to the questions they asked.
The two men had often admired one another’s work, but did not meet in person until 1873, when Ruskin was Slade Professor of Art at Oxford and Emerson was in failing health. Their meeting promised to be memorable. Yet in the event, these two great minds did not so much meet as collide, shaken by personal and cultural differences that proved stronger than their affinities. Sara Atwood’s talk will explore the often complicated connections between these two eminent men.
Sara Atwood’s book, Ruskin’s Educational Ideals, was published by Ashgate in 2011. Further publications include contributions to the Yale University Press edition of Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (2013), Teaching Victorian Literature in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave 2017), John Ruskin and Nineteenth-Century Education (Anthem Press 2018), William Morris and John Ruskin: A New Road on Which the World Should Travel (University of Exeter Press 2019) and Victorian Environmental Nightmares (Palgrave 2019). She has lectured widely on Ruskin, both in the U.S. and abroad, focusing particularly on education, the environment, and language. She is co-director, with Prof. Jim Spates, of the Ruskin Society of North America (RSNA), a board member of the Ruskin Art Club, and a Companion of the Guild of St. George (UK). She teaches English literature and writing at Portland Community College.