Katherine Adams
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195336801
- eISBN:
- 9780199868360
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336801.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter traces developments in U.S. privacy discourse from the antebellum period, through Reconstruction, and into the 1890s. Taking ...
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This chapter traces developments in U.S. privacy discourse from the antebellum period, through Reconstruction, and into the 1890s. Taking Louisa May Alcott's novels Little Men (1871) andJo's Boys (1886) as its focus, it contrasts the romantic nationalism of early privacy discourse against the conception of privacy that emerges with laissez-faire and social Darwinist ideology. Heavily marketed for their autobiographical content, Alcott's novels exploit the public taste for private disclosure while also thematizing that very act by depicting the production and circulation of life narrative within Plumfield School. Like her father, the failed communitarian Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott is concerned with the conjunction of privacy, property, and market capitalism—particularly as this implicates female authorship. But she theorizes the experience of a priori unity as an effect, rather than a casualty, of self-publication and mass consumption. In her earlier work Alcott presents this view with great optimism, imagining the marketing of privacy as the basis for a just and racially integrated polis. At the end of her career, however, this same interarticulation of symbolic and material economies is portrayed as exclusionary and oppressive.Less
This chapter traces developments in U.S. privacy discourse from the antebellum period, through Reconstruction, and into the 1890s. Taking Louisa May Alcott's novels Little Men (1871) andJo's Boys (1886) as its focus, it contrasts the romantic nationalism of early privacy discourse against the conception of privacy that emerges with laissez-faire and social Darwinist ideology. Heavily marketed for their autobiographical content, Alcott's novels exploit the public taste for private disclosure while also thematizing that very act by depicting the production and circulation of life narrative within Plumfield School. Like her father, the failed communitarian Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott is concerned with the conjunction of privacy, property, and market capitalism—particularly as this implicates female authorship. But she theorizes the experience of a priori unity as an effect, rather than a casualty, of self-publication and mass consumption. In her earlier work Alcott presents this view with great optimism, imagining the marketing of privacy as the basis for a just and racially integrated polis. At the end of her career, however, this same interarticulation of symbolic and material economies is portrayed as exclusionary and oppressive.
Adam D. Shprintzen
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781469608914
- eISBN:
- 9781469612690
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/978146960891.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter explores movements that emphasized meatless dietetics. William Alcott's publication, Library of Health, presented dietary reform from a distinctly physiological perspective, helping to ...
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This chapter explores movements that emphasized meatless dietetics. William Alcott's publication, Library of Health, presented dietary reform from a distinctly physiological perspective, helping to broaden the appeal of meatless identity away from the sole realm of Grahamism through the notion of medical authority. Bronson Alcott—William's cousin and father of Louisa May Alcott—attempted to make dietary choice central to his utopian Fruitlands, a community free of oppression and flesh foods, a working model of how to live a morality-driven life. The difficulties incurred by the settlers at Fruitlands in finding a balance between intellectual, spiritual, and agricultural pursuits, however, illustrated the contradictions and limitations faced by dietary reformers. The chapter discusses other meatless ideologies that appeared during this time, including that of the water curists.Less
This chapter explores movements that emphasized meatless dietetics. William Alcott's publication, Library of Health, presented dietary reform from a distinctly physiological perspective, helping to broaden the appeal of meatless identity away from the sole realm of Grahamism through the notion of medical authority. Bronson Alcott—William's cousin and father of Louisa May Alcott—attempted to make dietary choice central to his utopian Fruitlands, a community free of oppression and flesh foods, a working model of how to live a morality-driven life. The difficulties incurred by the settlers at Fruitlands in finding a balance between intellectual, spiritual, and agricultural pursuits, however, illustrated the contradictions and limitations faced by dietary reformers. The chapter discusses other meatless ideologies that appeared during this time, including that of the water curists.
Kyle Gann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252040856
- eISBN:
- 9780252099366
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040856.003.0009
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Ives’s “Alcotts” movement is based on two figures, the popular novelist Louisa May Alcott and her grandiloquent but feckless philosopher father, Bronson Alcott. The music, ranging from idyllic to ...
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Ives’s “Alcotts” movement is based on two figures, the popular novelist Louisa May Alcott and her grandiloquent but feckless philosopher father, Bronson Alcott. The music, ranging from idyllic to tempestuous, leaves ambiguities as to which figure is being referred to. The middle section refers to 19th-century American parlor-style music, and the ending is the most complete and triumphant statement of the “Human Faith” theme.Less
Ives’s “Alcotts” movement is based on two figures, the popular novelist Louisa May Alcott and her grandiloquent but feckless philosopher father, Bronson Alcott. The music, ranging from idyllic to tempestuous, leaves ambiguities as to which figure is being referred to. The middle section refers to 19th-century American parlor-style music, and the ending is the most complete and triumphant statement of the “Human Faith” theme.
Arthur Versluis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199368136
- eISBN:
- 9780190201951
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199368136.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Discusses the mysticism of Bronson Alcott and introduces a little-known handwritten mystical text of Alcott called Tablets. Analyzes Alcott’s mysticism and importance in American Transcendentalism.
Discusses the mysticism of Bronson Alcott and introduces a little-known handwritten mystical text of Alcott called Tablets. Analyzes Alcott’s mysticism and importance in American Transcendentalism.
Kyle Gann
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252040856
- eISBN:
- 9780252099366
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040856.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
In January 1921, New York insurance company executive Charles Ives mailed self-published scores of a piano sonata he had written to 200 strangers. Unprecedentedly complex and modern beyond any music ...
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In January 1921, New York insurance company executive Charles Ives mailed self-published scores of a piano sonata he had written to 200 strangers. Unprecedentedly complex and modern beyond any music the recipients had seen before, the piece was subtitled “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860,” and the four sonata movements were named for American authors: “Emerson,” “Hawthorne,” “The Alcotts,” “Thoreau.” Ridiculed in the press at first, the Concord Sonata gained admirers (including composers like Copland and Gershwin and writers like Henry Bellamann), and when finally given its complete world premiere by John Kirkpatrick in 1939, it was hailed as “the greatest music composed by an American.” The piece is so complex that it has never been fully analyzed before, and this book is the first to explore and detail its methods on every page. Likewise, Ives wrote a book to accompany the sonata, titled Essays Before a Sonata, purporting to explain his aesthetic thinking, and no one has ever before seriously examined Ives’s aesthetic through-argument.Less
In January 1921, New York insurance company executive Charles Ives mailed self-published scores of a piano sonata he had written to 200 strangers. Unprecedentedly complex and modern beyond any music the recipients had seen before, the piece was subtitled “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860,” and the four sonata movements were named for American authors: “Emerson,” “Hawthorne,” “The Alcotts,” “Thoreau.” Ridiculed in the press at first, the Concord Sonata gained admirers (including composers like Copland and Gershwin and writers like Henry Bellamann), and when finally given its complete world premiere by John Kirkpatrick in 1939, it was hailed as “the greatest music composed by an American.” The piece is so complex that it has never been fully analyzed before, and this book is the first to explore and detail its methods on every page. Likewise, Ives wrote a book to accompany the sonata, titled Essays Before a Sonata, purporting to explain his aesthetic thinking, and no one has ever before seriously examined Ives’s aesthetic through-argument.
