Well, I did say "_one_ window" on American culture....
Did you mean to suggest that I recommended _only_
popular culture? I don't, personally, but it's true, I
think, that popular culture and its artifacts are
often more telling than high-culture sources because
the latter tend to represent how a culture views
itself, not how it lives itself in the quotidian.
Candice
--- Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "MC Ward" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 11:57 AM
> Subject: Re: Mr O'Brian/Richard Patrick Russ
>
>
> > You could do worse than _Doonesbury_ as a window
> > (_one_ window) on American culture. In fact, I'd
> > choose popular culture over more intellectual
> sources
> > to understand a society.
> >
> > Candice
> >
> I don't think that's entirely true. Depends on what
> you want to understand.
> To grasp the anger of, say, the French masses in
> 1770, you look at popular
> prints and broadsides. To see the potential,
> perhaps the dreams of that
> society you read Diderot. What tells you more about
> late 19th-century
> imperialism - Conrad, or the popular novels of the
> period?
>
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