University of Exeter Press

American Cultural Critics

    • 304 Pages


    This collection of essays assesses the work of a number of American intellectuals, including Susan Sontag, F.O. Mathieson, Daniel Bell and Hannah Arendt, who have addressed issues of culture and its multifaceted relations to politics, history, sociology and literary criticism. Concentrating on writing since 1940, the essays examine the central themes of American postwar intellectual history, including the continuing reaction to (or against) modernity and technology, the legacies of Marxism and psychoanalysis, and the re-examination of American founding principles and figures in conservative or liberal terms.







    This collection of essays assesses the work of a number of American intellectuals, including Susan Sontag, F.O. Mathieson, Daniel Bell and Hannah Arendt, who have addressed issues of culture and its multifaceted relations to politics, history, sociology and literary criticism.




    Introduction, David Murray

    1. Southern Literary and Intellectual History in the Twentieth Century: The Agrarians to Richard Weaver, Michael Kreyling

    2. The Agony of the Avant-Garde: Philip Rahv and the New York Intellectuals, Hugh Wilford

    3. F.O. Mattheissen's "Devotion to the Possibilities of Democracy" and his Place as an American Intellectual, Richard Bradbury

    4. Susan Sontag: The Intellectual and Cultural Criticism, Liam Kennedy

    5. Stanley Cavell: Must We Believe What We Say?, Michael Wood

    6. The Person in Place: Lewis Mumford, Pioneer of Cultural Criticism, Clive Bush

    7. Coming of Age in America: Margaret Mead and Karen Horney, Helen Carr

    8. Erik H. Erikson's Critical Themes and Voices: The Task of Synthesis, Lawrence J. Friedman

    9. Philip Rieff, Jerry Z. Muller

    10. Hannah Arendt, Richard H. King

    11. Garry Wills, Stephen J. Whitfield

    12. Black Intellectuals Past and Present, Ross Posnock

    13. Culture at Modernity's End: Daniel Bell and Fredric Jameson, Nick Heffernan

    Index



    David Murray teaches American Studies at the University of Nottingham.