The “Literary Delinquency” Debate in Nineteenth-Century America

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan. The “Literary Delinquency” Debate in Nineteenth-Century America. In 6th International Conference of English and American Studies, Silesian Studies in English – SILSE 2021, 9-10t September 2021, Institute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Silesian University in Opava. 2021.

Basic information

• Original name: The “Literary Delinquency” Debate in Nineteenth-Century America
• Authors: SMITH, Jeffrey Alan.
• Edition: 6th International Conference of English and American Studies, Silesian Studies in English – SILSE 2021, 9-10t September 2021, Institute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Silesian University in Opava, 2021.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60206 Specific literatures
• Country of publisher: Czech Republic
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords in English: American literature; nineteenth century; literary nationalism; Transcendentalism; Bible; parascripture; early journalism
• Tags: 19th century, American Literature, Bible, early journalism, literary nationalism, parascripture, transcendentalism
• Tags: International impact

Abstract

From the 1770s to the 1870s, American men and women of letters spent literally a century struggling with a question most famously (and tauntingly) put by a British critic in 1819: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play?" Numerous Americans themselves conceded America's "literary delinquency," agreed that "literature has no career in America" and that the US was a place "Where Fancy sickens, and where Genius dies." The very first meeting of the discussion group that became the Transcendentalist movement was devoted to the seeming failures of "American Genius," and for decades the issue preoccupied writers and critics both obscure and famous -- including William Ellery Channing, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Herman Melville and Walt Whitman -- as well as prominent foreign observers like Alexis de Tocqueville and Harriet Martineau. This presentation takes a close look at this long debate to identify its different phases, arguments and counter-arguments, noting various theories of the ambitious young nation's supposed cultural backwardness and of how, or whether, it would finally be overcome.

Links

• MUNI/A/1446/2020, interní kód MU: Name: Paradigms, strategies and developments - Anglophone literary and cultural studies

Investor: Masaryk University