A handful of brief biographies to illustrate the hopes and
disillusionment of artists in a triumphant democracy. In this
tight, convincing book, Ellis studies the careers of painter
Charles Willson Peale, novelist Hugh Henry Brackenridge, playwright
and theater manager William Dunlap, and lexicographer Noah Webster.
Like others in the generation that came to maturity with the
Revolution, they thought America's newly won independence heralded
a great cultural flowering, and fondly anticipated taking part in
it. The New Athens, of course, never saw the light of day, not
least because of the country's profound ambivalence towards the
arts. Many Americans, even well-educated ones, shared the view of
Plato, Rousseau, and other European thinkers that, as Ellis puts
it, "The muses were history's buzzards; when they began to gather,
the end was near." Then, as the 19th century ushered in a period of
explosive capitalist expansion, it became apparent that artists
would have to come to terms with the market in all its crudity,
that their professional integrity and patriotic loyalty to the
people were at odds with one another. In his own way each of Ellis'
men recoiled at the necessity of living "in that space between
aesthetic standards and popular opinion," but live there they did.
Peale failed to support himself with his brush, but succeeded with
his outlandish museum - the contents of which were snapped up after
his death by P. T. Barnum. Dunlap went bankrupt with Shakespeare,
but hit the jackpot with Kotzebue and chauvinistic extravaganzas
like The Glory of Columbia. Webster made a lot of money with his
speller and dictionary, but grew progressively more disgusted with
the runaway development of the freedoms he had once championed. The
only word, he claimed, he had ever coined was "demoralize." In the
end, with Emerson, this tension led to an open split: American
artists embraced alienation, and culture became a segregated sphere
of our national life. Ellis' argument ably combines sweeping
breadth and fine detail: a solid piece of scholarship with
something important to say about a turning point in American
history. (Kirkus Reviews)
Through portraits of four figures-Charles Willson Peale, Hugh Henry
Brackenridge, William Dunlap, and Noah Webster-Joseph Ellis
provides a unique perspective on the role of culture in
post-Revolutionary America, both its high expectations and its
frustrations.
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