After the Revolution : profiles of early American culture / Joseph J. Ellis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ellis, Joseph J.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Peale, Charles Willson, 1741-1827.

Peale, Charles Willson.

Brackenridge, H. H. (Hugh Henry), 1748-1816.

Brackenridge, H. H.

Dunlap, William, 1766-1839.

Dunlap, William.

Webster, Noah, 1758-1843.

Webster, Noah.

Intellectuals--United States--Biography.

Intellectuals.

United States.

United States--Civilization--1783-1865.

Civilization.

Genre:

Biographies.

Biography.

Physical Description:

xvi, 256 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 21 cm

Edition:

Norton paperback edition.

Place of Publication:

New York ; London : W.W. Norton & Company, 2002.

Summary:

An entrepreneur, a writer who wanted to depict an ideal society, a dramatist who tried to reconcile high aesthetic standards and populism, and a Connecticut Yankee who ran into the contradictions of conservatism and liberalism -- each of the four men depicted in this book had a vision of what kind of society post-Revolutionary America should be. Through portraits of these bellwether figures, historian Joseph J. Ellis examines the role of culture in post-Revolutionary America, both its high expectations and its frustrations.

Contents:

Part one : premonitions and paradoxes in the revolutionary era. Premonitions : an American Athens ; Paradoxes : culture and capitalism

Part two: profiles. Charles Willson Peale : portrait of the American artist as virtuous entrepreneur ; Hugh Henry Brackenridge : the novelist as reluctant democrat ; William Dunlap : the dramatist as benevolent patriarch ; Noah Webster : the Connecticut Yankee as nationalist ; Epilogue : New critics : toward Emerson.

Notes:

Originally published: 1979.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780393322330

0393322335

OCLC:

49044783