Gunter Leypoldt
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635740
- eISBN:
- 9780748651658
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635740.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book deals with narratives of cultural legitimation in nineteenth-century US literature, in a transatlantic context. Exploring how literary professionalism shapes romantic and modern cultural ...
More
This book deals with narratives of cultural legitimation in nineteenth-century US literature, in a transatlantic context. Exploring how literary professionalism shapes romantic and modern cultural space, the author traces the nineteenth-century fusion of poetic radicalism with cultural nationalism from its beginnings in transatlantic early romanticism, to the poetry and poetics of Walt Whitman, and Whitman's modernist reinvention as an icon of a native avant-garde. Whitman made cultural nationalism compatible with the rhetorical needs of professional authorship by trying to hold national authenticity and literary authority in a single poetic vision. Yet the notion that his ‘language experiment’ transformed essential democratic experience into a genuine American aesthetics also owes much to Whitman's retrospective canonization. What the author calls Whitmanian authority is thus a transatlantic and transhistorical discursive construct that can be approached from four angles. The book begins with an overview of transatlantic contexts such as the nineteenth-century literary field (Bourdieu) and the romantic turn to expressivism (Taylor). The author gives a detailed analysis of how Whitman's positions develop from the intellectual habitus, a cultural criticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and locates Whitmanian authority within three conceptual fields that function as contact zones for European and American theories of culture – romantic notions of national style as a kind of music. The book provides place-centred concepts of national aesthetics and traditional ideas about the aesthetic effects of democratic institutions. The final section, on Whitman's reinvention between the 1870s and the 1940s, discusses how the heterogeneous nineteenth-century perceptions of Whitman's work were streamlined into a modernist version of Whitman's nationalist program.Less
This book deals with narratives of cultural legitimation in nineteenth-century US literature, in a transatlantic context. Exploring how literary professionalism shapes romantic and modern cultural space, the author traces the nineteenth-century fusion of poetic radicalism with cultural nationalism from its beginnings in transatlantic early romanticism, to the poetry and poetics of Walt Whitman, and Whitman's modernist reinvention as an icon of a native avant-garde. Whitman made cultural nationalism compatible with the rhetorical needs of professional authorship by trying to hold national authenticity and literary authority in a single poetic vision. Yet the notion that his ‘language experiment’ transformed essential democratic experience into a genuine American aesthetics also owes much to Whitman's retrospective canonization. What the author calls Whitmanian authority is thus a transatlantic and transhistorical discursive construct that can be approached from four angles. The book begins with an overview of transatlantic contexts such as the nineteenth-century literary field (Bourdieu) and the romantic turn to expressivism (Taylor). The author gives a detailed analysis of how Whitman's positions develop from the intellectual habitus, a cultural criticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and locates Whitmanian authority within three conceptual fields that function as contact zones for European and American theories of culture – romantic notions of national style as a kind of music. The book provides place-centred concepts of national aesthetics and traditional ideas about the aesthetic effects of democratic institutions. The final section, on Whitman's reinvention between the 1870s and the 1940s, discusses how the heterogeneous nineteenth-century perceptions of Whitman's work were streamlined into a modernist version of Whitman's nationalist program.
Jean-Paul Gabilliet
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604732672
- eISBN:
- 9781621039860
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604732672.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
As a complex social process, cultural legitimation is difficult to observe because its various modalities refer to distinct realities. Legitimation is an intricate mechanism that can be broken down ...
More
As a complex social process, cultural legitimation is difficult to observe because its various modalities refer to distinct realities. Legitimation is an intricate mechanism that can be broken down into three modalities that function in relation to one another: visibility, recognition, and legitimacy. The legitimation of any cultural practice requires effects of consecration, that is, phenomena that “confirm” its accession to the dominant cultural hierarchy. This chapter examines how comics and comic books are inscribed in America’s cultural and social fields. It discusses the mechanisms and agents of internal consecration within the comic book field: the prizes, the specialty magazines, the fans, and the conventions. It also describes the second wave of comics fandom, the impetus of which came from a small group of adult science fiction fans who used to enjoy comic books in their childhood and whose interest was revived by DC Comics’s resurrection of the superhero genre in the late 1950s.Less
As a complex social process, cultural legitimation is difficult to observe because its various modalities refer to distinct realities. Legitimation is an intricate mechanism that can be broken down into three modalities that function in relation to one another: visibility, recognition, and legitimacy. The legitimation of any cultural practice requires effects of consecration, that is, phenomena that “confirm” its accession to the dominant cultural hierarchy. This chapter examines how comics and comic books are inscribed in America’s cultural and social fields. It discusses the mechanisms and agents of internal consecration within the comic book field: the prizes, the specialty magazines, the fans, and the conventions. It also describes the second wave of comics fandom, the impetus of which came from a small group of adult science fiction fans who used to enjoy comic books in their childhood and whose interest was revived by DC Comics’s resurrection of the superhero genre in the late 1950s.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226317762
- eISBN:
- 9780226317809
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226317809.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter explores the Renaissance and, as far as Alain L. Locke was concerned, the New Negro Movement. Many others often called it the Harlem Renaissance, although some felt this neglected ...
More
This chapter explores the Renaissance and, as far as Alain L. Locke was concerned, the New Negro Movement. Many others often called it the Harlem Renaissance, although some felt this neglected Chicago, Detroit, and other cities that saw cultural ferment in the 1920s. However, even Locke himself referred to it as the Renaissance on occasion. The terminological debate reflected some of the mixed opinions and conflicting commentaries that the movement elicited. Such a broad spectrum of opinion cast doubt on whether it even constituted a movement. Using his wry sense of self-presentation, Locke later called himself the “midwife” of the new attitudes and expressions that hearkened not only to the “new” culture but to a wider, more engaged sense of group identity. His philosophical bent and temperament led him, early and late, to ponder the issues of group identity and cultural legitimation in polemical and analytic terms.Less
This chapter explores the Renaissance and, as far as Alain L. Locke was concerned, the New Negro Movement. Many others often called it the Harlem Renaissance, although some felt this neglected Chicago, Detroit, and other cities that saw cultural ferment in the 1920s. However, even Locke himself referred to it as the Renaissance on occasion. The terminological debate reflected some of the mixed opinions and conflicting commentaries that the movement elicited. Such a broad spectrum of opinion cast doubt on whether it even constituted a movement. Using his wry sense of self-presentation, Locke later called himself the “midwife” of the new attitudes and expressions that hearkened not only to the “new” culture but to a wider, more engaged sense of group identity. His philosophical bent and temperament led him, early and late, to ponder the issues of group identity and cultural legitimation in polemical and analytic terms.
Jean-Paul Gabilliet
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604732672
- eISBN:
- 9781621039860
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604732672.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This book has shown that the cultural history of comic books in America is not limited to the history of publishers. Instead, cultural products correspond to a public that uses them in a variety of ...
More
This book has shown that the cultural history of comic books in America is not limited to the history of publishers. Instead, cultural products correspond to a public that uses them in a variety of ways. Since the 1950s, the comic book industry has witnessed a transformation of its readers. The appearance of “graphic novels” finally allowed for the emergence of works that are sold in bookstores, where “real” books are. In addition to helping eradicate much of the stigma that comic books have endured as products primarily destined for boys enduring an extended adolescence, graphic novels enabled comics to shift toward the field of “adult culture” and inscribed the medium into a commercial life that was unrelated to the monthly periodicity of comic books. Comic books saw the rise of the superhero genre that was embedded in American popular culture since the end of the 1930s. The cultural legitimation of American comics proved beneficial to the heirs of underground comics.Less
This book has shown that the cultural history of comic books in America is not limited to the history of publishers. Instead, cultural products correspond to a public that uses them in a variety of ways. Since the 1950s, the comic book industry has witnessed a transformation of its readers. The appearance of “graphic novels” finally allowed for the emergence of works that are sold in bookstores, where “real” books are. In addition to helping eradicate much of the stigma that comic books have endured as products primarily destined for boys enduring an extended adolescence, graphic novels enabled comics to shift toward the field of “adult culture” and inscribed the medium into a commercial life that was unrelated to the monthly periodicity of comic books. Comic books saw the rise of the superhero genre that was embedded in American popular culture since the end of the 1930s. The cultural legitimation of American comics proved beneficial to the heirs of underground comics.
