BELOVED COMMUNITY: THE CULTURAL CRITICISM OF RANDOLPH BOURNE, VAN WYCK BROOKS, WALDO FRANK, AND LEWIS MUMFORD (CULTURAL STUDIES OF THE UNITED STATES)

BLAKE, CASEY NELSON.;.(RANDOLPH BOURNE, VAN WYCK BROOKS, WALDO FRANK, AND LEWIS MUMFORD ABOUT)

ISBN 10: 0807842966 / ISBN 13: 9780807842966

Published by University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1990

About this Item

VERY GOOD CONDITION, CLEAN, SOLID.BRIGHT; BLACK SPINE & COVER TITLES ON GREY PAPER COVERS. ; 388 pages; central figures in the Greenwich Village "Little Renaissance" of the 1910s and in the postwar debates about American culture and politics.cultural criticisms and their attempts to forge a communitarian alternative to liberal and socialist poitics.

Seller Inventory # 141830

Bibliographic Details

• Title: BELOVED COMMUNITY: THE CULTURAL CRITICISM OF RANDOLPH BOURNE, VAN WYCK BROOKS, WALDO FRANK, AND LEWIS MUMFORD (CULTURAL STUDIES OF THE UNITED STATES)
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill
• Publication Date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807842966
• ISBN 13: 9780807842966
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Illustrated by Photo Art section PORTRAITS
• Edition: First Edition Thus?; 54321pt line.
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

The “Young American” critics — Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford — are well known as central figures in the Greenwich Village “Little Renaissance” of the 1910s and in the postwar debates about American culture and politics. In Beloved Community, Casey Blake considers these intellectuals as a coherant group and assesses the connection between thier cultural criticisms and their attempts to forge a communitarian alternative to liberal and socialist poitics.

Blake draws on biography to emphasize the intersection of questions of self, culture, and society in their calls for a culture of “personality” and “self-fulfillment.” In contrast to the tendency of previous analyses to separate these critics' cultural and autobiographical writings from their politics, Blake argues that their cultural criticism grew out of a radical vision of self-realization through participation in a democratic culture and polity. He also examines the Young American writers' interpretations of such turn-of-the-century radicals as William Morris, Henry George, John Dewey, and Patrick Geddes and shows that this adversary tradition still offers important insights into contemporary issues in American politics and culture.

Beloved Community reestablishes the democratic content of the Young Americans' ideal of “personality” and argues against viewing a monolithic therapeutic culture as the sole successor to a Victorian “culture of character.” The politics of selfhood that was so critical to the Young Americans' project has remained a contested terrain throughout the twentieth century.

About the Author

Casey Nelson Blake is professor of history and American studies at Columbia University. His critical essays have appeared in the American Scholar, Dissent, the Nation, and other journals of opinion.