TY - THES
AU - Thomas Edward Augst
AB - This dissertation analyzes the significance of reading within the context of market culture in Antebellum America. It is a cultural history of the nineteenth-century philosophy of character--the pragmatic and secular system of moral reflection which developed in tandem with the expansion of commercial capitalism. Emerson is now the best-known exemplar of this tradition, but it also surfaces in a rich popular literature of novels, periodical literature, institutional records, diaries, lectures, conduct manuals, textbooks and so on, which form the basis of my inquiry. Beginning with an investigation of antebellum mercantile libraries I examine the philosophy of character as it was elaborated in the intellectual lives of aspiring businessman. By situating middle-class literary practices within a complex social context, kept by merchants' clerks, popular discourse in the business community, habits of middle-class leisure, and the dissertation describes why a distinctive kind of reading experience became integral, in liberal arts pedagogy, to ethical training for middle-class life. In the second chapter, I explore the campaign to claim legitimacy for business as a learned profession. By representing the marketplace as the distinctive American arena for philosophical enterprise, businessmen made an innovative argument about the relationship between moral authority and literary practices in a liberal democracy. The third chapter takes up the case of Emerson, suggesting the philosophical significance he had for contemporaries and its relation to historically specific modes of literary practice. Through intensive examination of a few diaries kept by merchant clerks, the fourth chapter describes character as a vernacular rhetoric of moral life. A final chapter considers Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener" as an allegory about the challenges which a modern, professional culture of literacy posed for the vernacular practice of character. Together these lines of analysis establish my claim that the history of literacy practices and rhetorical values is crucial for understanding the relationship between liberal arts pedagogy and the moral imagination of modern market culture.
LA - English
M3 - Ph.D. Dissertation
N2 - This dissertation analyzes the significance of reading within the context of market culture in Antebellum America. It is a cultural history of the nineteenth-century philosophy of character--the pragmatic and secular system of moral reflection which developed in tandem with the expansion of commercial capitalism. Emerson is now the best-known exemplar of this tradition, but it also surfaces in a rich popular literature of novels, periodical literature, institutional records, diaries, lectures, conduct manuals, textbooks and so on, which form the basis of my inquiry. Beginning with an investigation of antebellum mercantile libraries I examine the philosophy of character as it was elaborated in the intellectual lives of aspiring businessman. By situating middle-class literary practices within a complex social context, kept by merchants' clerks, popular discourse in the business community, habits of middle-class leisure, and the dissertation describes why a distinctive kind of reading experience became integral, in liberal arts pedagogy, to ethical training for middle-class life. In the second chapter, I explore the campaign to claim legitimacy for business as a learned profession. By representing the marketplace as the distinctive American arena for philosophical enterprise, businessmen made an innovative argument about the relationship between moral authority and literary practices in a liberal democracy. The third chapter takes up the case of Emerson, suggesting the philosophical significance he had for contemporaries and its relation to historically specific modes of literary practice. Through intensive examination of a few diaries kept by merchant clerks, the fourth chapter describes character as a vernacular rhetoric of moral life. A final chapter considers Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener" as an allegory about the challenges which a modern, professional culture of literacy posed for the vernacular practice of character. Together these lines of analysis establish my claim that the history of literacy practices and rhetorical values is crucial for understanding the relationship between liberal arts pedagogy and the moral imagination of modern market culture.
PB - Harvard University
PY - 1996
EP - 266 pp.
TI - Making Society Out of Books: Character, Self-Fashioning, and the Rhetoric Market Culture in Nineteenth-Century America
ER -