In this Book
- Thinking America: New England Intellectuals and the Varieties of American Identity
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: University of New Hampshire Press
summary
In this thoughtful and wide-ranging cultural critique, Taylor explores the condition and role of the intellectual in nineteenth-century New England by examining five writers: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, William James, and George Santayana. Using key texts from each, he analyzes the status and identity of intellectual figures, and explores the relationship between intellectual work and theories of national identity. The questions the book raises--about the alliance between thought and action, about the best locations for intellectual work, and about the challenges posed to thinking by an increasingly fragmented and diverse public--remain pertinent today. Chronologically and geographically focused, Thinking America has wide resonance for the ongoing debates about the genealogy--and future viability--of the public intellectual.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-viii
- Note on Brief Titles
- pp. ix-xii
- 1. Affiliation and Alienation
- pp. 19-54
- 2. Thought and Action
- pp. 55-87
- 3. Conversation and Cosmopolitanism
- pp. 88-125
- 4. Variety and Limits
- pp. 126-158
- 5. Aesthetics and Institutions
- pp. 157-184
- Coda: The Scene of Instruction
- pp. 185-192
Additional Information
ISBN
9781584659150
Related ISBN(s)
9781584658627
MARC Record
OCLC
752610341
Pages
244
Launched on MUSE
2012-06-26
Language
English
Open Access
No