Making The America Of Art
Subtitle: Cultural Nationalism And Nineteenth-century Women Writers
Edition: Cdr edition
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: March 15, 2005
Language: eng
Format: CD-ROM
Number of pages: 286
ISBN-13: 9780814290699
Subjects: American - General; Women's Studies - General; Literary Criticism; Abridged Audio - Literature/Classics; 19th century; American literature; History; History and criticism; Nationalism and literature; United States; Women Authors; Women and literature
Description: "Making the "America of Art" demonstrates that beginning in the 1850s, women writers challenged the terms of the Scottish Common Sense philosophy, which had made artistic endeavors acceptable in the new Republic by subordinating aesthetic motivation to moral and educational goals. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Augusta Jane Evans drew on Ruskin to argue for the creation of a religiously based national aesthetic. In the postbellum years Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Constance Fenimore Woolson continued the process in a series of writings that revolved around three central areas of concern: the place of the popular in the realm of high art; the role of the genius; and the legacy of the Civil War." "Sofer significantly revises the history of 19th-century American women's authorship by detailing the gradual process that produced women writers wholly identified with literary high culture at the century's end."--Jacket.