The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910by Caroline WintererReview by: Karl GalinskyLibraries & the Cultural Record, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Fall, 2006), pp. 524-525Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25549374 .

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524 L8cCR/Book Reviews

four parts: the title with its heading, the bibliographical description, the note,

and the bibliographical references. The note information is varied and may contain the item's printing history, mention of its relative scarcity, information

about the author, or a description of its illustrations or other special features. The

bibliographical references identify the library that has a copy of the book (often

a national library, although not always) and a cross-reference, if relevant, to the

corresponding entries in the Blackmer, Atebey, or Gennadius catalogs. In addition to the interesting notes and references, the volume under review

provides several other invaluable features. Most notable among these is the

introduction by Navari, published in English, describing her methodology for

organizing the catalog. The outlined methodology reveals Navari's respect for

accuracy, specifically with reference to her explanation of collation. Another

significant feature in this catalog is the historical and informative essay written by Ioli Vingopoulou, which explores the nature of travel writing and its relationship to the Greek world. Especially welcome in a catalog of this nature is the reproduc tion of over two hundred rare illustrations, many in color, that originate from the

cataloged items.

The usefulness of this catalog is enhanced by an extended bibliography, a

guide to abbreviations, and the multiple indices: index of names; index of print

ers, publishers, booksellers, and bookbinders; and index of provenances.

While the catalog's most practical function might be restricted to specialists

and scholars of Greek civilization, its contents unquestionably would prove most

interesting for bibliophiles and rare book enthusiasts. Greek Civilization Through

the Eyes of Travellers and Scholars makes an excellent companion catalog to the

author's catalogs of the Blackmer and Atabey collections as well as Weber's catalog

of the Gennadius Library. Dimitris Contominas and Leonora Navari are to be

commended for their collaboration in offering this beautifully rich catalog.

Amy Andres, University of California San Francisco, Fresno

The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780

1910. By Caroline Winterer. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

x, 244 pp. $22.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8018-7889-6.

This is the paperback edition of a book originally published in 2002, and its

availability is to be greatly welcomed. Winterer writes well and concisely, and her

book has a clear focus that fills some of the gap between studies of classical culture

in early America and its reception in American popular culture in the twentieth

century. Winterer's emphasis is on the practitioners of the classics, that is, teachers

and academicians. She astutely analyzes the beginnings of the professionalization

of the classics in academe, which laid the groundwork for issues and attitudes in

more ways than one might suspect. The period she surveys witnessed the shift from classics being

a central component

of public discourse to becoming the preserve of its professional guardians. A major

theme of the book is the recurring conflict?I wish I could use the term "dynamics,"

but it would be the wrong characterization?between academic classicists who aim

to reach a wider public and those who consider professional specialization and its

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525

practice as their main goal. The process started with the centering of the school

curriculum for the cultured elite on the teaching of Greek and Latin. Monopolies are always

a bad thing: increasingly, as Winterer demonstrates (with commend

able recourse to the prevailing school texts, among others), the forest of classical

culture was lost for the trees of grammar and more grammar. It was easy enough,

then, for reactionaries to deflate the puffed-up claims of the superiority of such

an education, and the curriculum was freed up for other subjects. At a later stage of this development, when the sciences began to rear their ugly

head, one typical reaction by the classical guardians was to make their discipline

"scientific" as well. This led to a relentless preoccupation with text criticism and

editing. The net result again was a failure to convey, certainly to a larger audience,

what these texts actually meant amid the continuing absorption with minutiae.

Not that other voices were silent. Winterer describes them well in her last

chapter, "Scholarship versus Culture, 1870-1910," but presents especially vivid

examples in the preceding chapters too. What emerges is thatjust as

today classics

has been a profession in which the individual practitioner can make a tremendous

difference. The protean examples she presents are an implicit illustration of the

elasticity of the classical tradition and its adaptability to various contexts. She details

a major trend in the nineteenth century, when classicism was styled as "an antidote

to modern materialism and civic degeneracy" and linked "to a broad program of

self-formation that they called self-culture" (98). Classicists like Henry Frieze, who

taught for thirty-five years at the University of Michigan (where Winterer received

her Ph.D.), had a far-reaching impact because they were "quasi-ministerial" and

their lectures were "secular sermons," which shows, at the very least, that a craving

for "values," a topic of national conversation again today, is part of the American

tradition and can be tapped into in various ways. Another telling development

analyzed by Winterer is what she calls the feminization of classicism, especially in higher education, during the Gilded Age. The male bastion was opened up to

women, and that paved the way for the stellar contributions of women classical

scholars by the second third of the twentieth century. In sum, this is an

intelligent book about an important period in the development of the reception and practice of the classical tradition in America. Winterer at times

should have been more precise about the way she uses the terms "culture" and

even "classicism," but it is clear and by no means detrimental that these concepts, even in this book, mean different things to different people at different times.

Karl Galinsky, University of Texas at Austin

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