Birthing a Nation: Gender, Creativity, and the West in American LiteratureU of Nebraska Press, 1 gen 1999 - 242 pagine Birthing a Nation is about national identity and the American West. If it is a truism that facing west was the American male version of invoking the Muse, what happened if you were female? Most past interpretations of western American literature have echoed Frederick Jackson Turner?s frontier hypothesis, emphasizing the conflict of wilderness and civilization, the hero of rugged individualism, the act of returning to origins and reemerging as the reborn American Adam. In this reading of western American women writers who responded to the challenge to give birth to a nation, Susan J. Rosowski proposes an alternative, more hopeful affirmation of our cultural history and perhaps our cultural destiny. ø Rosowski begins by tracing the birth metaphor through three and a half centuries of American letters. She reexamines the premises underlying the telling of the literary West and posits a female model of creativity at the genesis of American literature. She follows four authors on a multigenerational journey, beginning with Margaret Fuller in 1843, moving on a generation later to Willa Cather, advancing to Jean Stafford, and ending with Marilynne Robinson. In her reading of these writers who most directly and deeply believed in literature as a serious and noble form of art and who wrote to influence how the country perceived itself, Rosowski contributes to the ongoing process of remapping the literary landscape |
Sommario
Fuller and the West as Muse | 15 |
The Long Foreground to Cathers West | 32 |
Cathers Western Stories | 58 |
ProCreativity and a Kinship Aesthetic | 79 |
Staffords Inherited West | 93 |
Staffords Western Stories | 113 |
Stafford Rewrites the Western | 136 |
The Western Hero as Logos | 157 |
Robinsons Politics of Meditation | 177 |
Afterword | 195 |
Notes | 201 |
Works Cited | 219 |
Altre edizioni - Visualizza tutto
Birthing a Nation: Gender, Creativity, and the West in American Literature Susan J. Rosowski Anteprima limitata - 2015 |
Birthing a Nation: Gender, Creativity, and the West in American Literature Susan J. Rosowski Visualizzazione estratti - 1999 |
Parole e frasi comuni
Adrienne Rich Alverna American literature American West Ántonia awakening Bohemian Girl Boston Adventure called Caroline Cawelti characters childhood Clarke conventional conversation created creativity cultural daughter death describes desire Emily experience fantasy feeling female fiction Franc frontier gender genesis girl give birth hear hero Housekeeping hunt idea imagined Jane Jean Stafford Jennie Jim's John lake land language Lassiter Lena letters living looked Lucy Gayheart male Margaret Fuller Marilynne Robinson meaning meditative metaphor Miss Pride Moby-Dick Molly Molly's mother Mountain Lion moved Muse myth narrative nation nature Nebraska never novel plot Ralph ranch reader reflects Riders rience Robinson romance Ruth scene sexuality Shane silence sister Sonia story Summer Sylvie talk tell things Thoreau thought tion tradition Trampas Venters violence Virginian voice Wallace Stevens Webster County western fiction wilderness Willa Cather woman women words writes wrote York