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61 books match the query 'Nineteenth Century' and 4 start with s
Sacred Places
American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth CenturyJohn F. Sears
University of Massachusetts Press, 1999
Tourism emerged as an important cultural activity in the United States in the 1820s as steamboats and canals allowed for greater mobility and the nation's writers and artists focused their attention on American scenery. From the 1820s until well after the Civil War, American artists, like Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, depicted American tourist attractions in their work, and often made their reputations on those paintings. Writers like Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, and James described their visits to the same attractions or incorporated them into their fiction. The work of these artists and writers conferred value on the scenes represented and helped shape the vision of the tourists who visited them. This interest in scenery permeated the work of both serious and popular writers and artists, and they produced thousands of images and descriptions of America's tourist attractions for the numerous guidebooks, magazines, and other publications devoted to travel in the United States during the period.
Drawing on this fascinating body of material, Sacred Places examines the vital role which tourism played in fulfilling the cultural needs of nineteenth-century Americans. America was a new country in search of a national identity. Educated Americans desperately wished to meet European standards of culture and, at the same time, to develop a distinctly American literature and art. Tourism offered a means of defining America as a place and taking pride in the special features of its landscape. The country's magnificent natural wonders were a substitute for the cathedrals and monuments, the sense of history that Europe had built over the centuries. Moreover, Sears argues, tourist attractions like Mammoth Cave, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Yosemite, and Yellowstone functioned as sacred places for a nation with a diversity of religious sects and without ancient religious and national shrines. For nineteenth-century Americans, whose vision was shaped by the aesthetics of the sublime and the picturesque and by the popular nineteenth-century Romantic view of nature as temple, such places fulfilled their urgent need for cultural monuments and for places to visit which transcended ordinary reality.
But these nineteenth-century tourist attractions were also arenas of consumption. Niagara Falls was the most sublime of God's creations, a sacred place, which, like Mount Auburn Cemetery, was supposed to have a profound moral effect on the spectator. But it was also an emporium of culture where the tourist shopped for Niagara's wonders and for little replicas of the Falls in the form of souvenirs. In Sacred Places, Sears describes how this strange, sometimes amusing, juxtaposition of the mythic and the trivial, the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the commercial remained a significant feature of American tourist attractions even after efforts were made at Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Niagara Falls to curb commercial and industrial intrusions.
Sears also explores how the nineteenth-century idealization of home stimulated the tourists' response to such places as the Willey House in the White Mountains, the rural cemeteries, and even the newly established asylums for the deaf, dumb, blind, and insane. And, in an intriguing account of Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, he examines the reasons why an important nineteenth-century anthracite transportation center was also a major tourist attraction.
Most of the attractions discussed in this book are still visited by millions of Americans. By illuminating their cultural meaning, Sacred Places prompts us to reflect on our own motivations and responses as tourists and reveals why tourism was and still is such an important part of American life.
Drawing on this fascinating body of material, Sacred Places examines the vital role which tourism played in fulfilling the cultural needs of nineteenth-century Americans. America was a new country in search of a national identity. Educated Americans desperately wished to meet European standards of culture and, at the same time, to develop a distinctly American literature and art. Tourism offered a means of defining America as a place and taking pride in the special features of its landscape. The country's magnificent natural wonders were a substitute for the cathedrals and monuments, the sense of history that Europe had built over the centuries. Moreover, Sears argues, tourist attractions like Mammoth Cave, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Yosemite, and Yellowstone functioned as sacred places for a nation with a diversity of religious sects and without ancient religious and national shrines. For nineteenth-century Americans, whose vision was shaped by the aesthetics of the sublime and the picturesque and by the popular nineteenth-century Romantic view of nature as temple, such places fulfilled their urgent need for cultural monuments and for places to visit which transcended ordinary reality.
But these nineteenth-century tourist attractions were also arenas of consumption. Niagara Falls was the most sublime of God's creations, a sacred place, which, like Mount Auburn Cemetery, was supposed to have a profound moral effect on the spectator. But it was also an emporium of culture where the tourist shopped for Niagara's wonders and for little replicas of the Falls in the form of souvenirs. In Sacred Places, Sears describes how this strange, sometimes amusing, juxtaposition of the mythic and the trivial, the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the commercial remained a significant feature of American tourist attractions even after efforts were made at Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Niagara Falls to curb commercial and industrial intrusions.
Sears also explores how the nineteenth-century idealization of home stimulated the tourists' response to such places as the Willey House in the White Mountains, the rural cemeteries, and even the newly established asylums for the deaf, dumb, blind, and insane. And, in an intriguing account of Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, he examines the reasons why an important nineteenth-century anthracite transportation center was also a major tourist attraction.
Most of the attractions discussed in this book are still visited by millions of Americans. By illuminating their cultural meaning, Sacred Places prompts us to reflect on our own motivations and responses as tourists and reveals why tourism was and still is such an important part of American life.
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Six American Novelists of the Nineteenth Century
An IntroductionRichard Foster
University of Minnesota Press, 1968
Six American Novelists of the Nineteenth Century was first published in 1968.This volume, based on material from the University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers, provides concise critical introductions to six nineteenth-century American novelists of major importance. The novelists discussed and the contributing authors are “James Fenimore Cooper” by Robert E. Spiller, “Nathaniel Hawthorne” by Hyatt H. Waggoner, “Herman Melville” by Leon Howard, “Mark Twain” by Lewis Leary, “William D. Howells” by William M. Gibson, and “Henry James” by Leon Edel. Biographical information about the writers is included with the critical discussions of their work. A selected bibliography for each novelists lists his works and critical and biographical writing about him.In his introduction to the volume Professor Foster offers a perspective view of the genius of nineteenth century American literature, a literature of innovative vision which he calls unique in its time. “Only one other national literature of the nineteenth century was so marked by intensity, idiosyncrasy, and the spirit of discovery as America’s - that of Russia,” Professor Foster writes. “If their typical postures in relation to ‘Europe’ were different, American and Russian writers of the nineteenth century nevertheless had in common something far more significant: the uniquely dramatic subject matter, bequeathed them by history, of a nation’s self-discovery and self-creation. This was epic material; and fiction, especially the novel, was the aptest means of imaginatively encompassing it.”
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Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century
Franklin W. Knight
University of Wisconsin Press, 1970
Knight examines the conditions that maintained slavery in Cuba in the nineteenth century and perceptively analyzes the sociological effect of the institution on the island's politics, culture, and economy. He attacks the long-held theory that an Iberian cultural heritage and the Roman Catholic Church significantly modified the institution of slavery and shows that Cuban slave society shared many characteristics with other Caribbean societies, whether Anglo-Saxon, French, or Spanish. Knight's systematic study includes important new material from the archives of the Ministerio del Ultramar in Madrid.
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Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
The Mortality Cost of Colonizing Liberia in the Nineteenth CenturyAntonio McDaniel
University of Chicago Press, 1995
In the early nineteenth century, thousands of emancipated and freeborn blacks from the United States returned to Africa to colonize the area now known as Liberia. In this, the first systematic study of the demographic impact of this move on the migrants, Antonio McDaniel finds that the health of migrant populations depends on the adaptability of the individuals in the group, not on their race.
McDaniel compares the mortality rates of the emigrants to those of other migrants to tropical areas. He finds that, contrary to popular belief, black immigrants during this period died at unprecedented rates. Moreover, he shows that though the emigrant's mortality levels were exceptionally high, their mortality patterns were consistent with those of other populations.
McDaniel concludes that the greater the variance between the environment left and the environment entered, the higher the probability of contracting a new disease, and, in some cases, of death from these diseases. Additionally, a migrant's health can be affected by dietary changes, differences in local pathogens, inappropriate immunities, and increased risk of accidents due to unfamiliar surroundings.
McDaniel compares the mortality rates of the emigrants to those of other migrants to tropical areas. He finds that, contrary to popular belief, black immigrants during this period died at unprecedented rates. Moreover, he shows that though the emigrant's mortality levels were exceptionally high, their mortality patterns were consistent with those of other populations.
McDaniel concludes that the greater the variance between the environment left and the environment entered, the higher the probability of contracting a new disease, and, in some cases, of death from these diseases. Additionally, a migrant's health can be affected by dietary changes, differences in local pathogens, inappropriate immunities, and increased risk of accidents due to unfamiliar surroundings.
[more]