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Washington Irving's Critique of American Culture
Sketching a Vision of World Citizenship
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2021
Summary
Washington Irving’s Critique of American Culture: Sketching a Vision of World Citizenship challenges long-standing views of Washington Irving. He has been portrayed as writing in the 18th century style of Addison and Goldsmith, without having much substance of his own. Irving has also been accused of being insufficiently American and adrift in an identity crisis. The author argues that Irving addressed the American cultural context very extensively—he was a writer of substance who articulated an ethic of world citizenship that was found in the philosophy of ancient Greek cynics and stoics. This ethic was united with a love of picturesque travel, which emphasized variety and texture in experience, resulting in an extraordinary affirmation of the value of cultural diversity in the new Republic. Irving was, in fact, a liminal figure straddling Romantic and neoclassical modes of writing and acting. The author draws attention to Irving’s success as a writer in the pictorial mode. Irving also expressed a critique of cultural loss and environmental destruction like that articulated by the artist Thomas Cole. The work embraces an interdisciplinary approach, where insights from philosophy, religion, art history, and social history shed light on an underestimated writer.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2021
ISBN-Print
978-1-7936-1961-7
ISBN-Online
978-1-7936-1962-4
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
184
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
List of Illustrations No access
List of Illustrations No access
Notes No access
Too English? No access
Valuing the Past and Assessing “Progress” No access
The Substance with the Style No access
Notes No access
Cultural Egocentrism 101 No access
Notes No access
The Beginning of Irving’s Art No access
The Art of Landscaping No access
Notes No access
American Ovid—A False Start No access
American Virgil, American Claude No access
The Shattered Pumpkin: Subverting the Sublime No access
