Muckraking Exposes and the Shaping of Progressive Era Political Culture
This study is an attempt to redress a lacuna in rhetorical scholarship and the unjustified reign of a simplistic analysis in historical scholarship by examining the character of progressive era political culture through a close analysis of muckraking texts. While rhetoricians have not examined the political culture of the Progressive Era, nor of any aspect of the Progressive Era for that matter, historians have overlooked the centrality of the muckraking press and taken for granted the character of Progressive Era political culture. Contrary to the theses of many historians, the central thesis of this study is that exposes helped shape progressive era political culture by weaving together liberalism and more traditional moral resources, namely civic and religious traditions, in an attempt to restore a balance among democracy, capitalism, and morality. The exposes drew from and tried to contain competing moral and political traditions within a traditionally religious genre. The heteroglossia of the exposes suggest an unstable and open political culture, one ripe for change. Indeed, an examination of the exposes reveal how two performative tradition take advantage of the instability and attempt to craft a political morality to supplement liberalism.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign