Dutiful, dullish coverage of an impossibly vast subject.
"Intellectual life" as Perry (Indiana U.) describes it seems to
occupy an ill-lit border region between sociology and intellectual
history. Perry supplies a lot of information (and helpful
suggestions for further reading) but neither clear thumbnail
sketches of individual intellectuals (Franklin, say, or Emerson)
nor cogent analyses of major trends (the Great Awakening,
Transcendentalism, pragmatism, etc.) nor satisfying explanations of
the link between culture and matters political/social/economic.
Perry's besetting sin is vagueness, the habitually soft focus of
his language: "If we contrast the modernist poets' search for unity
inside the confines of a text with Dewey's groping efforts to
coordinate intelligence with emotion and imagination, we see
tremendous disparity in conceptions of intellectual life in this
era." Perry is not so much obscure as loose. He will say things
like, "In America, culture rose to prominence, first, as a
celebration of individual growth and, only second, in criticisms of
society's failings" - which makes little sense until one realizes
he means "the term 'culture' first rose to prominence in the 19th
century," etc. Perry's study is strongest as regards the evolution
of the American university, where he offers both useful statistics
(no more than 10 percent of the population ever attended college
during the 1800s) and sensible generalities (the "free-lance
intellectual" has nowadays either moved into academe or died). But
all too often a blurry, unexciting overview. (Kirkus Reviews)
This historical study of intellectuals asks, for every period, who
they were, how important they were, and how they saw themselves in
relation to other Americans. Lewis Perry considers intellectuals in
their varied historical roles as learned gentlemen, as clergymen
and public figures, as professionals, as freelance critics, and as
a professoriate.
Looking at the changing reputation of the intellect itself, Perry
examines many forms of anti-intellectualism, showing that some of
these were encouraged by intellectuals as surely as by their
antagonists. This work is interpretative, critical, and highly
provocative, and it provides what is all too often missing in the
study of intellectuals--a sense of historical orientation.
General
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