The ‘Supremest of Yankee Critics’: Harold Stearns, the Young Intellectuals, and America’s Discontents

This article works to shed light on Harold Stearns’s (1891–1943) thinking about Americans’ struggle for authentic modes of creative and critical self-expression in an environment he and others perceived as generally inimical to that struggle. It attempts to convey some sense of the contribution to A...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inUniversity of Toronto quarterly Vol. 82; no. 1; pp. 20 - 43
Main Author Muller, Adam
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published North York University of Toronto Press 01.12.2013
Subjects
American culture
American history
Creativity
Cultural identity
Intellectuals
Progressivism
Stearns, Harold
Writers
United States > US
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Summary:This article works to shed light on Harold Stearns’s (1891–1943) thinking about Americans’ struggle for authentic modes of creative and critical self-expression in an environment he and others perceived as generally inimical to that struggle. It attempts to convey some sense of the contribution to American art and culture made by Stearns’s early and most influential work, the essays collected in America and the Young Intellectual (1921), and traces its relationship to the cultural criticism produced by other noteworthy intellectuals in the twilight of the Progressive Era. Along the way, it shows how Stearns both reflected and contributed to the view of America held by the extraordinary generation of writers and intellectuals responsible for shaping American cultural identity during and after the interwar years.
ISSN:0042-0247
1712-5278
DOI:10.3138/UTQ.82.1.20