Recalling the wild : naturalism and the closing of the American West / Mary Lawlor.

ISBN:

9780585333182

Title:

Author:

Lawlor, Mary, 1949-

Personal Author:

Lawlor, Mary, 1949-

Publication Information:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 224 pages) : illustrations

Contents:

Romantic Westernism and the Example of Daniel Boone -- Scenes of Visionary Enchantment: The Lewis and Clark Narratives and the Leatherstocking Novels -- Frederick Jackson Turner, Edward S. Curtis, and the Romance of Disappearing -- Importing Naturalism to the American West -- Frank Norris and the Fiction of the Lost West -- Jack London and the Politics of Evolution -- Stephen Crane's Literary Tourism -- Willa Cather and the Enchantment of Difference -- The Strangeness of Closure.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.

American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.

American fiction -- West (U.S.) -- History and criticism.

Historical fiction, American -- History and criticism.

Literature and history -- West (U.S.) -- History.

Western stories -- History and criticism.

Frontier and pioneer life in literature.

Wilderness areas in literature.

Naturalism in literature.

Closure (Rhetoric)

Geographic Term:

West (U.S.) -- In literature.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2000

Publication Information:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
813.52093278 21	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Ever since the first interactions between Europeans Native Americans, the "West" has served as a site of complex geographical, social, and cultural transformation. American literature is defined, in part, by the central symbols derived from these points of contact. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Western frontier was declared "closed", a demise solidified by Frederick Jackson Turner's influential essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893). At the same time, "naturalism" was popularized in the writings of Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Willa Cather, and the photographs of Edward Curtis. Though very different artists, they were united by their common attraction to the mythic American West.

Author Notes

Mary Lawlor is an associate professor of English and American Studies at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

In 1890, the US Census officially acknowledged the end of the western frontier, until then a physical symbol for the sense of growth, adventure, and possibility of American life. With the official recognition of its end, the frontier became a source for nostalgic memorials of what the US once was. These visions of the West are reflected in the opposing romantic and naturalistic literary traditions. Lawlor (Muhlenberg College) focuses on the naturalists and how their work reflected and magnified the closure of the US, spiritually as well as geographically. In individual chapters on Frank Norris, Jack London, Stephen Crane, and Willa Cather, Lawlor details how these writers' literary visions reflect the US's loss of freedom and the consequent rise of social constraints, urbanization, and banal existence. Lawlor proceeds with her argument fully aware of the larger debate about the American West begun by Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land (1950) and continued in Annette Kolodny's The Lay of the Land (CH, Jan'76) and more recently in Richard White's "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own" (CH, Jun'92). Although Lawlor does not strive for as global a perspective as these works, her focus on naturalism constitutes a vital and useful re-evaluation of that period of US literature. Graduate students through faculty. P. J. Ferlazzo; Northern Arizona University