Title: Sublime thoughts/penny wisdom
First published: 1995
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.
Subjects: Authors and readers, Theory, Literature and society, History and criticism, American literature, Appreciation, Civilization, Canon (Literature), History, American literature, history and criticism, 19th century, Emerson, ralph waldo, 1803-1882, Thoreau, henry david, 1817-1862, United states, civilization, 19th century
Places: United States
People: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: PS1638 .T44 1995