Marriage, violence, and the nation in the American literary West
By: William R. Handley.
Series: Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ;; [132]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Cambridge, UK; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 261
Subjects: American literature -- West (U.S) -- History and criticism.; Novelists, American -- Homes and haunts -- West (U.S.); Domestic fiction, American -- History and criticism.; National characteristics, American, in literature.; Western stories -- History and criticism.; Frontier and pioneer life in literature.; Family violence in literature.; Women pioneers in literature.; Marriage in literature.; Violence in literature.; West (U.S.) -- Intellectual life.; West (U.S.) -- In literature.
Description: "In Marriage, Violence, and the Nation in the American Literary West, William R. Handley examines literary interpretations of the western American past. Handley argues that although recent scholarship provides a narrative of western history that counters the optimistic story of frontier individualism by focusing on the victims of conquest, twentieth-century American fiction tells a different story of intra-ethnic violence, surrounding marriages and families. He examines works of historiography, as well as writing by Zane Grey, Willa Cather, Wallace Stegner, and Joan Didion among others, to argue that these works highlight white Americans' anxiety about what happens to American "character" when domestic enemies such as Indians and Mormon polygamists, against whom the nation had defined itself in the nineteenth century, no longer threaten its homes. Handley explains that once its enemies are gone, imperialism brings violence home in retrospective narratives that allegorize national pasts and futures through intimate relationships."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 234-255) and index.