Cincinnatus : George Washington and the Enlightenment

Format:

Book

Title:

Cincinnatus : George Washington and the Enlightenment

Author:

Wills, Garry, 1934-

ISBN:

9780385175623

Publication Information:

Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1984.

Physical Description:

xxvi, 272 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

Contents:

Introduction -- Part One. The resignation : Secular charisma -- From Newburgh to Annaplois -- Dictator -- Weems and Cincinnatus -- Weems and the cherry tree -- Greenough and Pheidias -- Part Two. The farewell : Opinion -- Nonalignment -- Character -- fame -- Role -- Part Three. Constitution : Founder -- Lawgiver -- Sacrifice -- Head and heart -- The rounded image.

Personal Subject:

Washington, George, 1732-1799.

Washington, George, 1732-1799 (OCoLC)fst00178100

Subject(s):

Enlightenment -- United States.

Heroes -- United States.

United States -- Intellectual life -- 1783-1865.

Geographic Term:

United States -- Intellectual life -- 1783-1865.

United States.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Monmouth Public Library	973.41 WILLS	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Author Notes

Garry Wills, 1934 - Garry Wills was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1934. Wills received a B.A. from St. Louis University in 1957, an M.A. from Xavier University of Cincinnati in 1958, an M.A. (1959) and a Ph.D. (1961) in classics from Yale. Wills was a junior fellow of the Center for Hellenic Studies from 1961-62, an associate professor of classics and adjunct professor of humanities at Johns Hopkins University from 1962-80.

Wills was the first Washington Irving Professor of Modern American History and Literature at Union College, and was also a Regents Professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara, Silliman Seminarist at Yale, Christian Gauss Lecturer at Princeton, W.W. Cook Lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School, Hubert Humphrey Seminarist at Macalester College, Welch Professor of American Studies at Notre Dame University and Henry R. Luce Professor of American Culture and Public Policy at Northwestern University (1980-88). Wills is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his articles appear frequently in The New York Review of Books.

Wills is the author of "Lincoln at Gettysburg," which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1993 and the NEH Presidential Medal, "John Wayne's America," "A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government" and "The Kennedy Imprisonment." Other awards received by Wills include the National Book Critics Award, the Merle Curti Award of the organization of American Historians, the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale Graduate School, the Harold Washington Book Award and the Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, which was for writing and narrating the 1988 "Frontline" documentary "The Candidates."

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Since political journalist Wills has become Henry R. Luce Professor of American Culture and Public Policy (at Northwestern U.), he has been applying himself to topics related to the American Founding. This latest, an interpretation of Washington as seen by Washington himself, by his contemporaries, and by some of his earliest biographers, portraitists, and sculptors, should have more general interest than earlier Wills studies on the Declaration and the Federalist papers, if not any greater scholarly respect. Wills' depiction of Washington as a new kind of hero, a civic hero, is certainly accurate; it's just as certainly uninspired. Wills has no trouble showing Washington as a man with a theatrical flair who advanced his reputation and standing through a series of resignations; first as commander of the revolutionary army, then as president. Both series of moves were carefully prepared and carefully executed (Washington knew, for instance, that his presidential resignation would carry even greater weight if his Farewell Address--not his title--were carried in the newspapers after he had actually departed for Virginia); and both showed a man who knew when to accept power and when to give it up. It was not surprising, then, that while Washington was often tagged a Moses or a Caesar, it was the secular image of Cincinnatus, the plowman who saved Rome and then returned to his plow, that made the most sense. The terms of civic virtue, as the American revolutionaries themselves understood, demanded a humble leader, a citizen. When Mason Weems hung the Cincinnatus tag on Washington in the first short edition of his Life of Washington (1800), it stuck tight. Wills says that the public uproar over Horatio Greenough's statue of Washington for the Capitol rotunda derived from the statue's superhuman qualities, while Gilbert Stuart's portraits of Washington in simple civilian attire were warmly received. Wills cites the Scottish Enlightenment once again for the importance of the concept of public opinion--setting the stage for Washington's awareness of the importance of gesture, and for Jefferson's awareness of the need for new heroes, of which Washington was the ideal type. The picture here of Washington as the paragon of civic virtue does nothing to tarnish that image, and even if it only reinforces what academics already know, it does at least spread the word around. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.