By the Law of Nature: Form and Value in Nineteenth-century AmericaThis provocative study examines nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American writing in conjunction with economic and political developments in order to elucidate conceptions of value and identity in liberal culture. Horwitz explores work by Emerson, Twain, Howells, Norris, Dreiser, and Cather, as well as painting by the Hudson River School, alongside debates about tariffs, laissez-faire policies, stock speculation, corporate trusts, homesteading, and the nature of property and value. These aesthetic performances and public debates typically invoked nature as the ground of value. Horwitz argues that appealing to nature was a central strategy of the liberal tradition in the United States and that literary and other aesthetic artifacts helped evolve the semantic and conceptual field in which historical developments and debates occurred. Interlacing close textual analyses and rigorous historical interpretation, this interdisciplinary work will interest students of American culture and literature. |
Contents
Nature as Protean Ground | 3 |
Natures Nation Of Course | 9 |
Sublime Possession American Landscape | 20 |
Copyright | |
11 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
1st sess absolute achieved action acts aesthetic agency Alexandra alienation American appeal to nature appropriate argued Basil called capital Carey Cather chapter character cognitive Cole Cole's commodity Cong contracts conventional corporate Cowperwood critics culture debate Debs Debs's desire divine Dreiser economy Edited Emerson essay exchange formal harmony historical homestead Homestead Act Howells Howells's human hypothecation ideal identity imagination independence individual Jadwin Kant labor land landscape art law of nature Leo Marx liberal literary logic Mark Twain Marx McQuade metonymy Mississippi moral Mother Jones natural law natural-rights Norris notion novel objects organic person piloting political precisely principle production protectionism protectionist realism reform relation representation rhetoric river romance self-reliance sense social speculation Standard Starrucca Viaduct structure sublime Thomas Cole tion trade transcendence transcendental transcendentalist trust University Press Veblen virtue vision Walter Benn Michaels William Dean Howells writes York