Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America

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Macmillan, 1991 - History - 305 pages
John F. Kasson writes of the deep tensions created by the demands of democracy, the pressures of an expanding market economy, and the desire for social distinction. He re-creates the deferential and often coarse society of colonial years, then its transformation as aspirations and social forms earlier restricted to the gentry became popularized. The rapidly industrializing economy most intensively affected the booming cities. Etiquette advisers sought to instruct the rising middle class in ways of egalitarianism: how to present oneself at home and in public; how to express pleasure and affections and suppress anger and conflict; how to conduct oneself with decorum at a concert or theatrical performance. Mr. Kasson examines a host of diverse topics, from the "lost art of hat tipping" to the rise of the table fork and how to behave at table, to the writings of Poe, Melville, and William James. "Rudeness and Civility" is a rare book that is insightful and entertaining: it will make readers think about our changing manners in a fresh way. -- From publisher's description.
 

Contents

Introduction 39
3
Manners before the Nineteenth Century
9
Etiquette Books and the Spread of Gentility
34
The Semiotics of Everyday Life
70
Bodily Management in Public
112
Emotional Control
147
Table Manners and the Control of Appetites
182
The Disciplining of Spectatorship
215
Selected Bibliography of Etiquette Books 18001910
287
Sources of Illustrations
295
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About the author (1991)

John F. Kasson, who teaches history and American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the author of Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man; Amusing the Million; Rudeness and Civility; and Civilizing the Machine.

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