Sublime thoughts/penny wisdom
Subtitle: situating Emerson and Thoreau in the American market
By: Richard F. Teichgraeber III.
Series: New studies in American intellectual and cultural history
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 283
Subjects: Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 -- Appreciation -- United States.; Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862 -- Appreciation -- United States.; American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc.; Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Authors and readers -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Canon (Literature); United States -- Civilization -- 19th century.
Description: 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.

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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.