Format:
XXIII, 283 S.
ISBN:
0-8018-5000-2
Series Statement:
New studies in American intellectual and cultural history
Content:
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau have traditionally been portrayed as alienated outsiders, isolated voices of opposition to a society that failed to heed their words. More recently, they have been seen as unwitting advocates of capitalist culture, their texts and careers driven by its hidden logic even as they indicted its excesses. In Sublime Thoughts/Penny Wisdom Richard F. Teichgraeber III rejects both of these views to offer a revisionist account of the relation of Emerson and Thoreau to the emerging market culture of antebellum America
Content:
Emerson and Thoreau, Teichgraeber argues, engaged their contemporary readers in a common conversation about the institutions, conduct, and moral fiber of a Northern society experiencing radical social changes and, in Southern slavery, encountering a dramatic challenge to its political values and economic way of life. Teichgraeber contends that Emerson and Thoreau knew their own purposes as social critics and set about achieving them in their published writings. In turn, the new mediators of antebellum culture - commercial publishers, editors, reviewers, and booksellers - successfully marketed the two Concord writers to a broad range of ordinary readers, discussed their works with surprising discernment, and constructed the images by which Emerson and Thoreau would eventually be canonized in American literature
Language:
English
Subjects:
American Studies
Keywords:
1817-1862 Thoreau, Henry David
;
Buchmarkt
;
1803-1882 Emerson, Ralph Waldo
;
Buchmarkt
;
1817-1862 Thoreau, Henry David
;
Gesellschaftskritik
;
1817-1862 Thoreau, Henry David
;
Literarisches Leben
;
1803-1882 Emerson, Ralph Waldo
;
Gesellschaftskritik
;
1803-1882 Emerson, Ralph Waldo
;
Literarisches Leben
;
1803-1882 Emerson, Ralph Waldo
;
Rezeption
;
1817-1862 Thoreau, Henry David
;
Rezeption
