Washington Irving's Critique of American Culture: Sketching a Vision of World Citizenship

Washington Irving's Critique of American Culture challenges traditional views of his work, revealing him as a writer of substance with an ethic of world citizenship rooted in ancient Greek philosophy. He embraced picturesque travel and critiqued cultural loss and environmental destruction, offering an interdisciplinary perspective on his work.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 218 pages
Publication date: 15 March 2023
Publisher: Lexington Books

Washington Irving's Critique of American Culture: Sketching a Vision of World Citizenship challenges long-standing views of the author. Irving has been portrayed as writing in the 18th century style of Addison and Goldsmith, without having much substance of his own. He has also been accused of being insufficiently American and adrift in an identity crisis. However, 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.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781793619631