Washington Irving’s Critique of American Culture

Sketching a Vision of World Citizenship

J. Woodrow McCree

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2021
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781793619624
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism History & Theory
• Index: Literature

Washington Irving's Critique of American Culture: Sketching a Vision of World Citizenship challenges long-standing views of Washington Irving. He has been portrayed as writing in the 18th century style of Addison and Goldsmith, without having much substance of his own. Irving has also been accused of being insufficiently American and adrift in an identity crisis. The author argues that Irving addressed the American cultural context very extensively—he was a writer of substance who articulated an ethic of world citizenship that was found in the philosophy of ancient Greek cynics and stoics. This ethic was united with a love of picturesque travel, which emphasized variety and texture in experience, resulting in an extraordinary affirmation of the value of cultural diversity in the new Republic. Irving was, in fact, a liminal figure straddling Romantic and neoclassical modes of writing and acting. The author draws attention to Irving's success as a writer in the pictorial mode. Irving also expressed a critique of cultural loss and environmental destruction like that articulated by the artist Thomas Cole. The work embraces an interdisciplinary approach, where insights from philosophy, religion, art history, and social history shed light on an underestimated writer.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• 1 Style with Substance
• 2 Satire in the Name of World Citizenship
• 3 The Picturesque Aesthetic and Neoclassical/Romantic Boundary Crossing
• 4 American Ovid, American Virgil, American Claude, and Pumpkin Smasher
• 5 Irving’s Critique of American Culture in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
• 6 World Citizenship on Frontiers Near and Far
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author