Acknowledgements

A Graduate School bureaucrat prevented me from acknowledging my many debts, both intellectual and personal, in the dissertation itself. Five years have passed, and now I’m bound to have forgotten to thank many people—my apologies.

Thanks first to my dissertation committee. Paul Jay taught me how to read Emerson. As director, he boosted my confidence when I was ready to abandon the project in the wake ofCarl Guarneri’s magisterial book. After six harrowing weeks, I realized that Professor Guarneri’s work opened many more doors than it closed. Shamelessly, I appropriated his research. When Carl agreed to be a reader, he was politic enough to ignore the thinly-veiled Oedipal rage of my early drafts (“how dare you preempt my dissertation with a masterwork?”), later; he gently steered me away from several unproductive avenues. And completely above and beyond the call, he flew to Chicago on extremely short notice. Jim Rocks was an ideal reader, supporting my work at every moment.

Thanks also to the interlibrary loan staff at Loyola University Chicago, the incredibly helpful staff in the second floor reading room of the Newberry Library, and the Illinois Historical Survey at the University of Illinois. Peggy Brock, Suzanne Gossett, Tom Kaminski, Alan Kozlowski, and Jeff Nealon all provided critical support. It was at Robert and Mary Lou Nicolay’s summer home in the Wisconsin Northwoods where I first saw Fourier’s couronne boréale. And the dedication only hints at my debt to Claire Nicolay.