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I don't have any ideas about who wrote the Visitant contributions and haven't read that particular set of columns, but from your description they sound an awful lot like something that was a staple of Anglo-American newspapers and of English letters going back at least to Queen Anne. The Spectator would be the model for essays that essentially observe various different kinds of behavior in company and model what a "complaisant" gentlemanly type should be doing. Franklin did a lot of this in his newspaper days (and, I argue, in his Autobiography). A good entry point for this is the literature on "politeness;" the name that occurs to me off the top of my head is Larry Klein for his work on Shaftesbury and politeness, but there are others-- I'll plug an essay of mine in Pennsylvania History from some years ago for a footnote on this topic. David Shields also has a number of things in this area. Hope this helps-- Marc Harris The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College 3000 Ivyside Park / Altoona, PA 16601 mlh6@psu.edu / Phone 814.949.5242 / Fax 814.949.5011
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