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Highbrow-lowbr
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A book that has been read but is in good condition. Very minimal damage to the cover including scuff marks, but no holes or tears. The dust jacket for hard covers may not be included. Binding has minimal wear. The majority of pages are undamaged with minimal creasing or tearing, minimal pencil underlining of text, no highlighting of text, no writing in margins. No missing pages. See the seller’s listing for full details and description of any imperfections.
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eBay item number:316528240197
Item specifics
- Condition
- ISBN
- 0674390768
- EAN
- 9780674390768
- Publication Name
- N/A
- Type
- Hardback
- Release Title
- Highbrow-lowbrow: Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (...
- Artist
- Levine, Lw
- Brand
- N/A
- Colour
- N/A
About this product
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Harvard University Press
ISBN-10
0674390768
ISBN-13
9780674390768
eBay Product ID (ePID)
2128986
Product Key Features
Book Title
Highbrow-Lowbrow : the Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America
Number of Pages
320 Pages
Language
English
Publication Year
1988
Topic
General, Popular Culture, United States / General
Illustrator
Yes
Genre
Social Science, History
Book Series
The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization Ser.
Format
Hardcover
Dimensions
Item Weight
21.2 Oz
Additional Product Features
Intended Audience
Trade
LCCN
88-011021
Reviews
Levine offers a fascinating account of the nation's evolving artistic tastes and thereby challenges any aesthetic storm trooper who would try to enforce an oversimplified notion of Culture with a capital C...What [he] proves, compellingly, is that we should be less rigid in our aesthetic judgments., We can all appreciate a scholar who bites the process that feeds him. Highbrow/Lowbrow sinks its teeth into our smug cultural assumptions and holds on for dear life., [This book] provides depth and complexity to a debate that has degenerated into stale polemics. By unearthing a wealth of fascinating details about American culture in the middle and later nineteenth century, Levine shows us how much has changed en route to the twentieth. In particular, he reveals how recently the categories of "high" and "low" culture came into being, and how thoroughly they were shaped by class prejudice and ethnocentric anxiety...Highbrow/Lowbrow is absorbing and provocative, clearly a product of humane judgment and mature reflection, and a pleasure to read., Levine's lucid, mind-stretching and highly accessible scholarship describes how, by the late nineteenth century, American culture divided into high art and low, two warring camps., This book, like all of Levine's work, invites us out to play. His writing is highly engaging, his argumentativeness provocative. Even in his lament he gives us hope, for he has written a high-minded and very American defense of the unforeclosed and pluralist potential of democratic culture., Provides just the kind of balanced, historically informed assessment that can be of immediate value at a time when appeals to eternal truth fly thick and fast., How we Americans came to treat symphony and chamber concerts and operas as if we were going to church is an interesting tale. For a most thorough and informative discussion, please read Lawrence Levine's witty book.
Dewey Edition
21
Dewey Decimal
306.4/7/0973
Table Of Content
Acknowledgments Prologue 1. William Shakespeare in America 2. The Sacralization of Culture 3. Order, Hierarchy, and Culture Epilogue Notes Index
Synopsis
In this unusually wide-ranging study, spanning more than a century and covering such diverse forms of expressive culture as Shakespeare, Central Park, symphonies, jazz, art museums, the Marx Brothers, opera, and vaudeville, a leading cultural historian demonstrates how variable and dynamic cultural boundaries have been and how fragile and recent the cultural categories we have learned to accept as natural and eternal are. For most of the nineteenth century, a wide variety of expressive forms--Shakespearean drama, opera, orchestral music, painting and sculpture, as well as the writings of such authors as Dickens and Longfellow--enjoyed both high cultural status and mass popularity. In the nineteenth century Americans (in addition to whatever specific ethnic, class, and regional cultures they were part of) shared a public culture less hierarchically organized, less fragmented into relatively rigid adjectival groupings than their descendants were to experience. By the twentieth century this cultural eclecticism and openness became increasingly rare. Cultural space was more sharply defined and less flexible than it had been. The theater, once a microcosm of America--housing both the entire spectrum of the population and the complete range of entertainment from tragedy to farce, juggling to ballet, opera to minstrelsy--now fragmented into discrete spaces catering to distinct audiences and separate genres of expressive culture. The same transition occurred in concert halls, opera houses, and museums. A growing chasm between "serious" and "popular," between "high" and "low" culture came to dominate America's expressive arts. "If there is a tragedy in this development," Levine comments, "it is not only that millions of Americans were now separated from exposure to such creators as Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Verdi, whom they had enjoyed in various formats for much of the nineteenth century, but also that the rigid cultural categories, once they were in place, made it so difficult for so long for so many to understand the value and importance of the popular art forms that were all around them. Too many of those who considered themselves educated and cultured lost for a significant period--and many have still not regained--their ability to discriminate independently, to sort things out for themselves and understand that simply because a form of expressive culture was widely accessible and highly popular it was not therefore necessarily devoid of any redeeming value or artistic merit." In this innovative historical exploration, Levine not only traces the emergence of such familiar categories as highbrow and lowbrow at the turn of the century, but helps us to understand more clearly both the process of cultural change and the nature of culture in American society.
LC Classification Number
E169.1.L536 1988
Item description from the seller
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- f***f (1598)- Feedback left by buyer.Past 6 monthsVerified purchaseExcellent Seller, Goes the Extra Mile. The Seller Was Incredibly Communicative. Smooth Transaction, Shipped Very Quickly, As Advertised; Good Price; Well Packaged & Delivered Within a Few Days. Item in Described Promised Condition, Thank You Very Much!!!!!!!!!!! A+
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- e***n (2248)- Feedback left by buyer.Past monthVerified purchaseExcellent seller. Great communication , fast delivery, extra care in packing for shipment 📦, great price 💰, Came as shown in photo📸, I would do repeat buys in 1 sec with this seller. AAAA ++++. 5 st🌟rs. <(•🪖•)>
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Seller feedback (272,482)
This item (1)
All items (272,482)
- f***f (1598)- Feedback left by buyer.Past 6 monthsVerified purchaseExcellent Seller, Goes the Extra Mile. The Seller Was Incredibly Communicative. Smooth Transaction, Shipped Very Quickly, As Advertised; Good Price; Well Packaged & Delivered Within a Few Days. Item in Described Promised Condition, Thank You Very Much!!!!!!!!!!! A+
- p***m (268)- Feedback left by buyer.Past 6 monthsVerified purchaseA+ Highest Rating for this transaction. Nova Classic Volume 2 - Marvel / Paperback - condition & quality look really good, ALMOST NEW even better than described. Shipping was Fast (1 week) / packaging was thin mylar mailer, but no visible damage to book. Great price AND free shipping. I buy here often, and this transaction was flawless. 5 STARS
- e***n (2248)- Feedback left by buyer.Past monthVerified purchaseExcellent seller. Great communication , fast delivery, extra care in packing for shipment 📦, great price 💰, Came as shown in photo📸, I would do repeat buys in 1 sec with this seller. AAAA ++++. 5 st🌟rs. <(•🪖•)>