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Article: Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth Century America.
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- January 3, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The naming of a truly American culture is an occupational hazard intellectuals have pursued since Ralph Waldo Emerson declared our cultural independence in 1837. Emerson characterized American culture as pragmatic and demotic while his disciple Walt Whitman argued that it must become inclusive and democratic. "I should demand a program of culture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors or lecture rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the west, the workingmen ... and with reference to the perfect equality of women."
Some have claimed that the artists of the 1850s--Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman--produced such a culture. ...