Critical Americans - Victorian Intellectuals and Transatlantic Liberal Reform (Paperback, New edition)

In this intellectual history of American liberalism during the second half of the nineteenth century, Leslie Butler examines a group of nationally prominent and internationally oriented writers who sustained an American tradition of self-consciously progressive and cosmopolitan reform. She addresses how these men established a critical perspective on American racism, materialism, and jingoism while she recaptures their insistence on the ability of ordinary citizens to work toward their limitless potential as intelligent and moral human beings. At the core of Butler's study are the writers George William Curtis, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, James Russell Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton, a quartet of friends who would together define the humane liberalism of America's late Victorian middle class. In creative engagement with such British intellectuals as John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, and Goldwin Smith, these ""critical Americans"" articulated political ideals and cultural standards to suit the burgeoning mass democracy the Civil War had created. This transatlantic framework informed their notions of educative citizenship, print-based democratic politics, critically informed cultural dissemination, and a temperate, deliberative foreign policy. Butler argues that a careful reexamination of these strands of late nineteenth-century liberalism can help enrich a revitalized liberal tradition at the outset of the twenty-first century.

General

Imprint:	The University of North Carolina Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	April 2007
First published:	April 2007
Authors:	Leslie Butler
Dimensions:	235 x 156 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	400
Edition:	New edition
ISBN-13:	978-0-8078-5792-2
Categories:	Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies
LSN:	0-8078-5792-0
Barcode:	9780807857922

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!