No Place of Grace

by Lears, Jackson

• ISBN13: 9780226469706
• ISBN10: 0226469700
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

T. J. Jackson Lears draws on a wealth of primary sources sermons, diaries, letters as well as novels, poems, and essays to explore the origins of turn-of-the-century American antimodernism. He examines the retreat to the exotic, the pursuit of intense physical or spiritual experiences, and the search for cultural self-sufficiency through the Arts and Crafts movement. Lears argues that their antimodern impulse, more pervasive than historians have supposed, was not "simple escapism," but reveals some enduring and recurring tensions in American culture. "It's an understatement to callNo Place of Gracea brilliant book. . . . It's the first clear sign I've seen that my generation, after marching through the '60s and jogging through the '70s might be pausing to examine what we've learned, and to teach it."Walter Kendrick,Village Voice "One can justly make the claim thatNo Place of Gracerestores and reinterprets a crucial part of American history. Lears's method is impeccable."Ann Douglas,The Nation

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition	xi
Preface	xv
Acknowledgments	1	(2)
Roots of Antimodernism: The Crisis of Cultural Authority During The Late Nineteenth Century	3	(56)
A Pattern of Evasive Banality: Official Modern Culture in Industrial America	7	(19)
A Social Crisis: The Republican Tradition and the Radical Specter	26	(6)
Unreal City: Social Science, Secularization, and the Emergence of Weightlessness	32	(15)
A Psychic Crisis: Neurasthenia and the Emergence of a Therapeutic World View	47	(12)
The Figure of The Artisan: Arts and Crafts Ideology	59	(38)
Origins of the American Craft Revival: Persons and Perceptions	66	(8)
Revitalization and Transformation in Arts and Crafts ideology: The Simple Life, Aestheticism, Educational Reform	74	(9)
Reversing Antimodernism: The Factory, The Market, and The Process of Rationalization	83	(8)
The Fate of the Craft Ideal	91	(6)
The Destructive Element: Modern Commercial Society and The Martial ideal	97	(44)
From Domestic Realism to ``Real Life''	103	(4)
Class, Race, and the Worship of Force	107	(10)
The Psychological Uses of the Martial ideal: The Cult of Experience and the Quest for Authentic Selfhood	117	(7)
The Psychological Uses of the Martial Ideal: Guiney, Norris, Adams	124	(17)
The Morning of Belief: Medieval Mentalities in a Modern World	141	(42)
The Image of Childhood and the Childhood of the Race	144	(5)
Medieval Sincerity: Genteel and Robust	149	(11)
Medieval Vitality: the Erotic Union of Sacred and Profane	160	(7)
The Medieval Unconscious: Therapy and Protest	167	(16)
The Religion of Beauty: Catholic Forms And American Consciousness	183	(34)
The Rise of Catholic Taste: Cultural Authority and Personal Regeneration	185	(7)
Art, Ritual, and Belief: The Protestant Dilemma	192	(6)
American Anglo-Catholicism: Legitimation and Protest	198	(5)
The Poles of Anglicanism: Cram and Scudder	203	(14)
From Patriarchy to Nirvana: Patterns of Ambivalence	217	(44)
The Problem of Victorian Ambivalence: Sources and Solutions	220	(5)
The Lotus and the Father: Bigelow, Lowell, Lodge	225	(16)
William Sturgis Bigelow	225	(9)
Percival Lowell	234	(3)
George Cabot Lodge	237	(4)
Aesthetic Catholicism and ``Feminine'' Values: Norton, Hall, Brooks	241	(20)
Charles Eliot Norton	243	(4)
G. Stanley Hall	247	(4)
Van Wyck Brooks	251	(10)
From Filial Loyalty to Religious Protest: Henry Adams	261	(38)
Early Manhood: The Meandering Track of the Family Go-Cart	263	(3)
Husband, Historian, Novelist: Adams's Crisis of Generativity	266	(4)
The Antimodern Quest: From Niagara to the Virgin	270	(9)
Between Father and Mother, I: The Virgin, The Dynamo, and the Angelic Doctor	279	(7)
Between Father and Mother, II: The Antimodern Modernist	286	(13)
Epilogue	299	(14)
Biographical Appendix	313	(12)
Notes	325	(40)
Index	365