Niagara Falls
Subtitle: icon of the American sublime
By: Elizabeth McKinsey.
Series: Cambridge studies in American literature and culture
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1985
Place of publication: Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 331
Subjects: American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Sublime, The; Niagara Falls (N.Y. and Ont.) in art; Niagara Falls (N.Y. and Ont.) -- Description and travel; Niagara Falls (N.Y. and Ont.) -- In literature
Description: In this fascinating study, Beth McKinsey has chronicled the changing image of Niagara Falls, analysing the shifts in sensibility that produced different responses to the great cataract from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. She examines the evolving role of the Falls as the very meaning of the sublime moved away from its roots in eighteenth-century English aesthetics: from a natural, to a moral, to a technological basis. At the same time, the author describes the growing commercial trade.
Notes: Bibliography: p. 283-319.