America and the Patterns of Chivalry

John Fraser explores a major paradox about the USA: that after the Civil War, in a country now officially dedicated to rational, pacific, industrial progress and equality, there was a growing enthusiasm in the North for chivalric values. With a wealth of examples, modern and medieval, he shows how those values had not simply made for high-toned violence and romantic fictions, but, when transposed into college life, crusading reformism, and the radical labor movement, were powerful modifiers of the Gilded Age ethos of unbridled capitalism. The permeation of American fiction, from Twain to The Great Gatsby and beyond, and the whole of popular culture, especially the movies, by the recognition that behaviors, while legal, could be morally unacceptable because dishonorable, is one of the many admirable things about this country. Fraser has written a book that will move its readers as well as instruct, enlighten, and entertain them.