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Cargando... The refinement of America : persons, houses, cities (1992 original; edición 1993)por Richard L. Bushman
Información de la obraThe Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities por Richard L. Bushman (1992)
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. This is a book that was assigned in an Urban History class I took several years ago. I wasn't sure what to think of it at first, it read like a catalog of the linen closet of a stranger. But the chapters were short - the length of a comfortable sitdown, and slowly I found that the lists and catalogs did hold the kind of meaning that Bushman discussed. He did an enormous amount of research, but more importantly, he paid attention to the research and the items and provided a meaningful and valid context for their analysis. This book would be of interest to anyone studying the details and detritus of gentrification and the gentrified classes. It is not a very quick read, but it is a very possible read, not terribly dense, detailed enough to feel like you've accomplished something at the end of every chapter. You will never look at forks the same way again. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
In this illuminating analysis of early American society, Richard Bushman traces the introduction of gentility into the life of the nation. He explores the concern for stylishness, taste, beauty, and politeness that began to be felt in America after 1700, and examines how this concern changed our environment and culture. Bushman makes clear that the quest for gentility, far from being trivial, was the serious pursuit of a personal and social ideal with sources in classical and Renaissance literature. In Europe, the growing interest in manners and beautiful environments was connected to the power of royal courts. In America, the transformation of architecture, furnishings, and wardrobes - from plain, rudimentary, and frugal, to decorative and sumptuous - was linked to the transfer of power to the colonial gentry. Gentility was the culture of the colonies' ruling elite. After the Revolution, gentility spread to a broad middle class, as an essentially aristocratic culture was democratized. The change affected nearly every aspect of life. The spread of gentility turned the conduct of ordinary people into a performance. Courtesy books taught people how to hold their bodies, and how to dress, eat, and converse in a pleasing way. The wish to be pleasing came to encompass virtually every form of behavior and every aspect of the physical environment, from houses and yards to public buildings and the adornment of streets. Factories sprang up to supply a vast new market for furniture, dishes, curtains, and carpets. Cities and towns planted trees, landscaped parks and greens, and erected fashionable hotels and churches. All of these developments were part of a vast effort to present a refined face to the world and to create a new kind of society. Bushman stresses that these visions of a more elegant life both complemented and competed with other American values associated with evangelical religion, republicanism, capitalism, and the work ethic. The melding with other values resulted in contradictions that were not easily resolved and that provided much cultural work for writers and theologians. Finally, he argues that gentility gained strength from collaboration with capitalism, but in a way that blunted class conflict. The combination of capitalism, republicanism, and gentility prevented the hardening of class consciousness. Instead there emerged a belief in the right of every citizen to membership in the middle class. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)973History and Geography North America United StatesClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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Bushman argues, “The culmination of the genteel lifestyle was the genteel person, disciplined, deferential, spirited, polite, knowledgeable, forceful, graceful. The long list of desired traits, when integrated into a single character, created a magnetism and power that was the ideal of the age” (pg. 19). Turning to courtesy-books, Bushman writes, “These books speak for the enduring connection of New World culture with Europe and for the surprising adaptability of centuries-old values to life carried on under vastly different social circumstances from those where the books originated. Through the books’ rules, the cultural practices of an aristocratic European society, quite removed from anything known on these shores, flowed into Britain’s raw and unfinished American colonies” (pg. 33). Examining architecture, Bushman writes, “A grand house, properly laid out and decorated, anchored a person’s standing in the community and even sustained political power. Gentility was interwoven with the totality of gentry culture. By the Revolution, those who lacked taste generally lacked power” (pg. 97). In this way, “by the eighteenth century, the meaning of gentry houses so far exceeded the practical functions they performed as sheltered warm places for sleeping, eating, and work that houses became a form of literature. The houses were stage sets for dramas, and like the characters themselves, could be envisioned within the frame of a story” (pg. 132).
Bushman writes, “The realm of the middling people was the family rather than town or county. Propriety, rather than the need for public dignity, sustained this simpler variant of gentility. The desired goal was respectability rather than eminence” (pg. 208). He continues, “Of all the forms of print pouring from the presses, sentimental fiction played the most critical part in the extension of refinement to the middle class. The influence of sentimental fiction was not a new development in the propagation of refinement; in the eighteenth century, novels had joined forces with courtesy books to spread information about genteel behavior” (pg. 281). In this way, “The domestication of gentility had the effect of putting women at the center of genteel performances” (pg. 281). Addressing the principal dichotomy in gentility of the period, Bushman writes, “‘City’ and ‘country’ were the words used to designate the broadest cultural regions. The terms divided the world in half, implying refinement and polish in the city and coarseness in the country. The usage was inaccurate if taken as an actual description of the two places. In reality polished and coarse culture could be found in both city and country” (pg. 353). He further writes, “For one large group, gentility stabilized identity amid the social confusion of the early nineteenth century” (pg. 404). Additionally, “Gentility was particularly useful in securing one’s identity along the lower boundary of the middle class, where people were emerging from a cruder traditional culture and were uneasy about the validity of their refinement” (pg. 404). Bushman concludes, “Gentility was also an independent variable in the class equation. Poor refined people distanced themselves from the vulgar poor and elicited different treatment” (pg. 446-447). In this way, “The promise of respectability contained in simple genteel objects and gestures lured ever more Americans into the toils of consumer culture, hopelessly blurring the boundaries of class” (pg. 447). ( )