Abstract:
ABSTRACT
CHANGING LANDSCAPES: AMERICAN FRONTIER
MYTHOLOGY AND “PLACE-MAKING” IN
POPULAR WESTERN NARRATIVES
by
Kylee Duran-Cox
Master of Arts in English
California State University, Chico
Spring 2010
The purpose of this thesis is to explore the way that American narratives have used frontier mythology to make place, and to explore the way that the mythological past has shaped our present. Though critics of past generations like Henry Nash Smith and Leo Marks have made the idea of the frontier central to their respective arguments, they have presented a model wherein they view American writers in a particular static relationship to the frontier. On the other hand, I argue that the frontier myth is dynamic, shifting, and continually updating, and that it continues to affect the way Americans construct, consume, and interpret the physical and cultural landscape around them. Spanning the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and Joan Didion’s Where I was From, reveal that the
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mythic urges of popular frontier literature often present a peculiar paradox and challenge in American place-making.
