Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams

Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams PDF Author: Joanne Jacobson
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299134440
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Argues that radical cultural change in the late 19th-century US intensified a set of complex rhetorical imperatives, which the letter was a genre ideally positioned to serve, and draws supporting evidence from the letters of historian Henry Adams. Concludes that faced with isolation and alienation from the quickly industrializing and urbanizing society, he chose letters as a medium over which he retained rhetorical control, and could therefore use to seek alliance and resistance. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams

Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams PDF Author: Joanne Jacobson
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299134440
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Get Book Here

Book Description
Argues that radical cultural change in the late 19th-century US intensified a set of complex rhetorical imperatives, which the letter was a genre ideally positioned to serve, and draws supporting evidence from the letters of historian Henry Adams. Concludes that faced with isolation and alienation from the quickly industrializing and urbanizing society, he chose letters as a medium over which he retained rhetorical control, and could therefore use to seek alliance and resistance. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Henry Adams

Henry Adams PDF Author: James P. Young
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700631828
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Henry Adams has been a neglected figure in recent years. The Education of Henry Adams is widely accepted as a classic of American letters, but his other work is little read except by specialists. His brilliant journalism is out of print, while Mont Saint Michel and Chartres and the novels Democracy and Esther receive little attention. Even the monumental History of the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, considered by some to be the greatest history written by any American, seems noticed only by scholars of that period. James P. Young, author of the highly regarded Reconsidering American Liberalism, seeks to revive interest in the thought of Adams by extracting core ideas from his writings concerning both American political development and the course of world history and then showing their relevance to the contemporary longing for a democratic revival. In this revisionist study, Young denies that Adams was a reactionary critic of democracy and instead contends that he was an idealistic, though often disappointed, advocate of representative government. Young focuses on Adams's belief that capitalist industrial development during the Gilded Age had debased American ideals and then turns to a careful study of Adams's famous contrast of the unity of medieval society with the fragmentation of modern technological society. Though fully aware of Adams's concerns about technology, Young rejects the idea that Adams was bitterly opposed to twentieth century developments in that field. He shows that though a liberal democrat with inclinations toward reform, Adams is much too sophisticated to be captured by any simple label.

Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing

Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing PDF Author: Celeste-Marie Bernier
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748692940
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 752

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Book Description
This comprehensive study by leading scholars in an important new field-the history of letters and letter writing-is essential reading for anyone interested in nineteenth-century American politics, history or literature. Because of its mass literacy, population mobility, and extensive postal system, nineteenth-century America is a crucial site for the exploration of letters and their meanings, whether they be written by presidents and statesmen, scientists and philosophers, novelists and poets, feminists and reformers, immigrants, Native Americans, or African Americans. This book breaks new ground by mapping the voluminous correspondence of these figures and other important American writers and thinkers. Rather than treating the letter as a spontaneous private document, the contributors understand it as a self-conscious artefact, circulating between friends and strangers and across multiple genres in ways that both make and break social ties.

The Education of Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams PDF Author: Henry Adams
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486146588
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 706

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning work by distinguished historian recounts search for order in a chaotic world. "A book of unique richness, of unforgettable comment and challenging thought . . ." — The New York Times.

Household Gods

Household Gods PDF Author: Sara Georgini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019088259X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Reflecting on his past, President John Adams mused that it was religion that had shaped his family's fortunes and young America's future. For the nineteenth century's first family, the Adamses of Massachusetts, the history of how they lived religion was dynamic and well-documented. Christianity supplied the language that Abigail used to interpret husband John's political setbacks. Scripture armed their son John Quincy to act as father, statesman, and antislavery advocate. Unitarianism gave Abigail's Victorian grandson, Charles Francis, the religious confidence to persevere in political battles on the Civil War homefront. By contrast, his son Henry found religion hollow and repellent compared to the purity of modern science. A renewal of faith led Abigail's great-grandson Brooks, a Gilded Age critic of capitalism, to prophesy two world wars. Globetrotters who chronicled their religious journeys extensively, the Adamses ultimately developed a cosmopolitan Christianity that blended discovery and criticism, faith and doubt. Drawing from their rich archive, Sara Georgini, series editor for The Papers of John Adams, demonstrates how pivotal Christianity--as the different generations understood it--was in shaping the family's decisions, great and small. Spanning three centuries of faith from Puritan New England to the Jazz Age, Household Gods tells a new story of American religion, as the Adams family lived it.

Literary Culture and U.S Imperialism : From the Revolution to World War II

Literary Culture and U.S Imperialism : From the Revolution to World War II PDF Author: John Carlos Rowe Professor of English University of California at Irvine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195351231
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
John Carlos Rowe, considered one of the most eminent and progressive critics of American literature, has in recent years become instrumental in shaping the path of American studies. His latest book examines literary responses to U.S. imperialism from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s. Interpreting texts by Charles Brockden Brown, Poe, Melville, John Rollin Ridge, Twain, Henry Adams, Stephen Crane, W. E. B Du Bois, John Neihardt, Nick Black Elk, and Zora Neale Hurston, Rowe argues that U.S. literature has a long tradition of responding critically or contributing to our imperialist ventures. Following in the critical footsteps of Richard Slotkin and Edward Said, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism is particularly innovative in taking account of the public and cultural response to imperialism. In this sense it could not be more relevant to what is happening in the scholarship, and should be vital reading for scholars and students of American literature and culture.

Epistolary Practices

Epistolary Practices PDF Author: William Merrill Decker
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807866636
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Letters have long been read as primary sources for biography and history, but their performative, fictive, and textual dimensions have only recently attracted serious notice. In this book, William Merrill Decker examines the place of the personal letter in American popular and literary culture from the colonial to the postmodern period. After offering an overview of the genre, Decker explores epistolary practices that coincide with American experiences of space, settlement, separation, and reunion. He discusses letters written by such well-known and well-educated persons as John Winthrop, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail and John Adams, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Samuel Clemens, Henry James, and Alice James, but also letters by persons who, except in their correspondence, were not writers at all: indentured servants, New England factory workers, slaves, soldiers, and Western pioneers. Individual chapters explore the letter writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and Henry Adams--three of America's most ambitious, accomplished, and theoretically astute letter writers. Finally, Decker considers the ongoing transformation of letter writing in the electronic age.

Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism

Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism PDF Author: John Carlos Rowe
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198030118
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description


Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century

Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Eric L. Haralson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317763254
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 551

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Book Description
With contributions from over 100 scholars, the Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Centry provides essays on the careers, works, and backgrounds of more than 100 nineteenth-century poets. It also provides entries on specialized categories of twentieth-century verse such as hymns, folk ballads, spirituals, Civil War songs, and Native American poetry. Besides presenting essential factual information, each entry amounts to an in-depth critical essay, and includes a bibliography that directs readers to other works by and about a particular poet.

Esther

Esther PDF Author: Henry Adams
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140447545
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
A freethinking young woman must choose between her passion for a preacher and purity of conviction In Henry Adams's memorable tale of old New York, the spirited young painter Esther Dudley is introduced to Stephen Hazard, an Episcopal clergyman at St. John's. But her views, learned from her father, are radical, and he is preoccupied with clerical duties; initially each is repelled by the other. After Esther receives a commission to refurbish the decorations at the church, however, Stephen becomes an enthusiast of her painting and a companion to her ailing father. Esther finds herself falling for the preacher and, following her father's death, even becomes engaged to him. But must she compromise her personal convictions to marry him? Originally published in 1884 under a female pseudonym, Esther is both an unforgettable story of a courageous woman grappling with a conflict between love and integrity and an evocative portrait of the tensions between science, art, and religion. Written with uncommon insight and humanity, Adam's novel rivals the best fiction of Edith Wharton for urbanity and wit.