Overview
Martha Banta reaches across several disciplines to investigate America's early quest to shape an aesthetic equal to the nation's belief in its cultural worth. Marked by an unusually wide-ranging sweep, the book focuses on three major ""testing grounds"" where nineteenth-century Americans responded to Ralph Waldo Emerson's call to embrace ""everything"" in order to uncover the theoretical principles underlying ""the idea of creation."" The interactions of those who rose to this urgent challenge-artists, architects, writers, politicians, and the technocrats of scientific inquiry-brought about an engrossing tangle of achievements and failures. The first section of the book traces efforts to advance the status of the arts in the face of the aspersion that America lacked an Art Soul as deep as Europe's. Following that is a hard look at heated political debates over how to embellish the architecture of Washington, D.C., with the icons of cherished republican ideals. The concluding section probes novels in which artists' lives are portrayed and aesthetic principles tested.
Full Product Details
Author: Martha Banta ,
Bennett Simon
Publisher: Yale University Press
Imprint: Yale University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.694kg
ISBN: 9780300122978
ISBN 10: 0300122977
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 04 January 2008
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
Martha Bantas book aims big. It investigates various American attitudes toward a unified theory of art, featuring strong readings of literature, architecture, and art history. It is a tour de force of learning.Alexander Nemerov, Yale University -- Alexander Nemerov
Martha Banta's book aims big. It investigates various American attitudes toward a unified theory of art, featuring strong readings of literature, architecture, and art history. It is a tour de force of learning. --Alexander Nemerov, Yale University <br><br>--Alexander Nemerov
Martha Banta's book aims big. It investigates various American attitudes toward a unified theory of art, featuring strong readings of literature, architecture, and art history. It is a tour de force of learning. -Alexander Nemerov, Yale University -- Alexander Nemerov
Author Information
Martha Banta is professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of several major books, including Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History and Taylored Lives: Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor, Veblen, and Ford.
