Obedient sons [electronic resource] : Youth and generational consciousness in American culture, 1630-1850s.

1991

1 online resource (417 p.)

Access is available to the Yale community

Access is restricted by licensing agreement.

This historical study argues that an American rhetoric unfolded from 1630 to the 1850s that transformed centuries-old conceptions of youth's duties into a language that invested a "younger" generation with particular responsibilities for maintaining community ideals. The first two chapters examine sermons, speeches, and other public documents to reveal the composition and use of the terms "generation" and "youth" that emerged from crises of societal continuity in seventeenth-century New England and continued to develop into the early nineteenth century. Young people in antebellum cities formed their own responses to this rhetoric and used it to explain their growing involvement in the public sphere. One chapter presents an extensive discussion of antebellum young men's political, reform, and cultural organizations and their use of a discourse that was shared by black and white groups. The next chapter traces the spread of these ideas to institutions outside the realm of "youth" that influenced thinking about historical commemoration and artistic nationalism. These themes culminated in the 1840s and 1850s, when youth for the first time became part of a national catch phrase, "Young America." A contradictory cast of politicians, literary promoters, and nationalists associated themselves with Young America; few favored explicitly patricidal or nativist rhetoric, while others sought a path towards the new based on notions of continuity with the past. The dissertation reveals that the conflict of generations is a relatively new way to describe youth's place in the nation. It raises questions about the cultural significance assigned to such conflicts and questions their consistency and persistence at all times, in every generation. The powerfully gendered implications of youth and generations and their roles in defining conceptions of manhood are explored throughout. This male language affected ideas of education, participation in political life, and the rhetoric of national expansion. Using an array of works produced by the participants themselves, this study explores the links between the rhetoric and experience of generational responsibility and notions of national identity that persist in the modern era.

Books / Online / Dissertations & Theses

English

July 12, 2011

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 1991.

Yale University.