Old Style: Unoriginality and Its Uses in Nineteenth-Century U. S. Literature

An aesthetic of unoriginality shaped literary style and reader taste for decades of the nineteenth century. While critics in the twentieth century and beyond have upheld originality and innovation as essential characteristics of literary achievement, they were not features particularly prized by earlier American audiences, Claudia Stokes contends. On the contrary, readers were taught to value familiarity, traditionalism, and regularity. Literary originality was often seen as a mark of vulgar sensationalism and poor quality. In Old Style Stokes offers the first dedicated study of a forgotten nineteenth-century aesthetic, explicating the forms, practices, conventions, and uses of unoriginality. She focuses in particular on the second quarter of the century, when improvements in printing and distribution caused literary markets to become flooded with new material, and longstanding reading practices came under threat. As readers began to prefer novelty to traditional forms, advocates openly extolled unoriginality in an effort to preserve the old literary ways. Old Style examines this era of significant literary change, during which a once-dominant aesthetic started to give way to modern preferences. If writing in the old style came to be associated with elite conservatism--a linkage that contributed to its decline in the twentieth century--it also, paradoxically provided marginalized writers--people of color, white women, and members of the working class--the literary credentials they needed to enter print. Writing in the old style could affirm an aspiring author's training, command of convention, and respectability. In dismissing unoriginality as the literary purview of the untalented or unambitious, Stokes cautions, we risk overlooking something of vital importance to generations of American writers and readers

An aesthetic of unoriginality shaped literary style and reader taste for decades of the nineteenth century. While critics in the twentieth century and beyond have upheld originality and innovation as essential characteristics of literary achievement, they were not features particularly prized by earlier American audiences, Claudia Stokes contends. On the contrary, readers were taught to value familiarity, traditionalism, and regularity. Literary originality was often seen as a mark of vulgar sensationalism and poor quality.

In Old Style Stokes offers the first dedicated study of a forgotten nineteenth-century aesthetic, explicating the forms, practices, conventions, and uses of unoriginality. She focuses in particular on the second quarter of the century, when improvements in printing and distribution caused literary markets to become flooded with new material, and longstanding reading practices came under threat. As readers began to prefer novelty to traditional forms, advocates openly extolled unoriginality in an effort to preserve the old literary ways. Old Style examines this era of significant literary change, during which a once-dominant aesthetic started to give way to modern preferences.

If writing in the old style came to be associated with elite conservatism—a linkage that contributed to its decline in the twentieth century—it also, paradoxically provided marginalized writers—people of color, white women, and members of the working class—the literary credentials they needed to enter print. Writing in the old style could affirm an aspiring author's training, command of convention, and respectability. In dismissing unoriginality as the literary purview of the untalented or unambitious, Stokes cautions, we risk overlooking something of vital importance to generations of American writers and readers.

Cover Old Style Title Copyright Dedication CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction PART I. UNORIGINALITY ON THE MARGINS Chapter 1. The Poetics of Unoriginality: The Case of Lucretia Davidson Chapter 2. Novel Commonplaces: Quotation, Epigraphs, and Literary Authority Chapter 3. A Few Good Books: Rereading and the Virtues of Familiarity PART II. ELITIST CONSERVATISM AND THE DEFENSE OF TRADITION Chapter 4. Old Friends in New Dress: James Fenimore Cooper and the Politics of the Sequel Chapter 5. Longfellow’s Antiquarianism Chapter 6. Thomas Bailey Aldrich and the End of Tradition Notes Bibliography Index "We celebrate innovation and experimentation, but Old Style reminds us that nineteenth-century American writers instead valued familiarity and traditionalism, which provided reliable markers of literary quality. Old Style examines the varied uses and expressions of unoriginality, which helped credential marginalized writers but which would eventually become associated with elitist conservatism"-- Provided by publisher