The Significance Of The Western Myth In Modern America

Author : Selina Schuster
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 24 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2013-09
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 3656497265

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The Significance of the Western Myth in Modern America by Selina Schuster Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, University of Paderborn (Institut fur Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Pro-Seminar 'The American Frontier', language: English, comment: Darstellung und Analyse des 'Mythos wilder Westen' - unter Bezugnahme auf die Konzepte der 'Frontier' und 'manifest Destiny' - mit anschliessender Auswertung der Bedeutung dieser Ideen fur das moderne Amerika., abstract: In this term paper I'm going to answer the question if the Western Myth and the idea of an American Frontier are still current topics in modern day America. The glorified myth of a frontier moving faster and faster into the unknown is deeply rooted in the heads of the American people, since the first settlers moved westwards, over hundred-fifty years ago. It had an enormous impact on America's history and on its national identity. But can this idea of a frontier still be found today, or is it just a historically important, but today mostly unappealing episode in recent history books? Furthermore, I will try to find an answer where hints and connections to the myth of the Old West - with its cowboys, lonesome riders and sheriffs - can be found in modern American culture. Are those images of the wild, deserted West still topical and influential, and if so, where. In which parts of life and culture can they be found, or are the Old West and the Western Myth just outdated? I'm going to carry out my researches about this topic with the help of the books 'The American frontier - Go West, young man' by Prof. Dr. Michael Porsche, 'The frontier in American History' by Frederick Jackson Turner, 'The Wild West: Myth and History' by Alexander Emmerich and several internet sources to illustrate and prove my theses. At the end of this term paper I hope to be able to point out, in which parts of everyday life in modern America references to the myth of the Wild West and the American Frontier can be found and which signi

Author : Selina Schuster
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 20 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2013-09-16
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9783656497042

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The Significance of the Western Myth in modern America by Selina Schuster Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, University of Paderborn (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Pro-Seminar 'The American Frontier', language: English, abstract: In this term paper I’m going to answer the question if the Western Myth and the idea of an American Frontier are still current topics in modern day America. The glorified myth of a frontier moving faster and faster into the unknown is deeply rooted in the heads of the American people, since the first settlers moved westwards, over hundred-fifty years ago. It had an enormous impact on America’s history and on its national identity. But can this idea of a frontier still be found today, or is it just a historically important, but today mostly unappealing episode in recent history books? Furthermore, I will try to find an answer where hints and connections to the myth of the Old West - with its cowboys, lonesome riders and sheriffs - can be found in modern American culture. Are those images of the wild, deserted West still topical and influential, and if so, where. In which parts of life and culture can they be found, or are the Old West and the Western Myth just outdated? I’m going to carry out my researches about this topic with the help of the books ‘The American frontier – Go West, young man’ by Prof. Dr. Michael Porsche, ‘The frontier in American History’ by Frederick Jackson Turner, ‘The Wild West: Myth and History’ by Alexander Emmerich and several internet sources to illustrate and prove my theses. At the end of this term paper I hope to be able to point out, in which parts of everyday life in modern America references to the myth of the Wild West and the American Frontier can be found and which significance they have.

Author : John Williams
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2011-03-30
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781590174241

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Butcher's Crossing by John Williams Pdf

Now a major motion picture starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Gabe Polsky. In his National Book Award–winning novel Augustus, John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America. It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been.

Author : Carter Matthew Carter
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
Page : 381 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2018-09-17
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781474402835

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Myth of the Western by Carter Matthew Carter Pdf

What is the nature of the relationship between the Hollywood Western and American frontier mythology? How have Western films helped develop cultural and historical perceptions, attitudes and beliefs towards the frontier? Is there still a place for the genre in light of revisionist histories of the American West?Myth of the Western re-invigorates the debate surrounding the relationship between the Western and frontier mythology, arguing for the importance of the genre's socio-cultural, historical and political dimensions. Taking a number of critical-theoretical and philosophical approaches, Matthew Carter applies them to prominent forms of frontier historiography. He also considers the historiographic element of the Western by exploring the different ways in which the genre has responded to the issues raised by the frontier. Carter skilfully argues that the genre has - and continues to reveal - the complexities and contradictions at the heart of US society. With its clear analyses of and intellectual challenges to the film scholarship that has developed around the Western over a 65-year period, this book adds new depth to our understanding of specific film texts and of the genre as a whole - a welcome resource for students and scholars in both Film Studies and American Studies.

Author : Greg Grandin
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2019-03-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781250179814

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The End of the Myth by Greg Grandin Pdf

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE A new and eye-opening interpretation of the meaning of the frontier, from early westward expansion to Trump’s border wall. Ever since this nation’s inception, the idea of an open and ever-expanding frontier has been central to American identity. Symbolizing a future of endless promise, it was the foundation of the United States’ belief in itself as an exceptional nation – democratic, individualistic, forward-looking. Today, though, America hasa new symbol: the border wall. In The End of the Myth, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin explores the meaning of the frontier throughout the full sweep of U.S. history – from the American Revolution to the War of 1898, the New Deal to the election of 2016. For centuries, he shows, America’s constant expansion – fighting wars and opening markets – served as a “gate of escape,” helping to deflect domestic political and economic conflicts outward. But this deflection meant that the country’s problems, from racism to inequality, were never confronted directly. And now, the combined catastrophe of the 2008 financial meltdown and our unwinnable wars in the Middle East have slammed this gate shut, bringing political passions that had long been directed elsewhere back home. It is this new reality, Grandin says, that explains the rise of reactionary populism and racist nationalism, the extreme anger and polarization that catapulted Trump to the presidency. The border wall may or may not be built, but it will survive as a rallying point, an allegorical tombstone marking the end of American exceptionalism.

Author : John H. Lenihan
Publisher : Urbana : University of Illinois Press
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 1980
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : UOM:39015002292368

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Showdown, Confronting Modern America in the Western Film by John H. Lenihan Pdf

Showdown is a study of America's oldest, most representative film genre, the Western movie from the perspective of social allegory. It assesses scores of major and minor films to show how Westerns function as vehicles for contemporary social and political critiques of American life.

Author : David Hamilton Murdoch
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 152 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : UVA:X004554871

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The American West by David Hamilton Murdoch Pdf

"In addition to presenting a sustained analysis of how and why the myth originated, Murdoch demonstrates that the myth was invented, for the most part deliberately, and then outgrew the purposes of its inventors. 'The American West' answers the questions that have too often been either begged or ignored. Why should the West become the focus for myth in the first place, and why, given the long process of western settlement, is the cattleman's West so central and the cowboy, of all prototypes, the mythic hero? And why should the myth have retained its potency up to the last decade of the twentieth century?"--Back cover.

Author : Brian W. Dippie
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 1976
Category : Little Bighorn, Battle of the, Mont., 1876
ISBN : MINN:31951D00699353P

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Custer's Last Stand by Brian W. Dippie Pdf

Author : Matthew Carter
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2014-03-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780748685592

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Myth of the Western by Matthew Carter Pdf

Myth of the Western re-invigorates the debate surrounding the relationship between the Western and frontier mythology, arguing for the importance of the genreOCOs socio-cultural, historical and political dimensions."e;

Author : David Hamilton Murdoch
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 156 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015054144103

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The American West by David Hamilton Murdoch Pdf

The Wild West of Hollywood and American folklore is nothing more than a functional myth asserts D.H. Murdoch in this study, which presents a sustained analysis of how the myth originated and why.

Author : Kevin J. Fernlund
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Page : 189 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2012-11-09
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780806185569

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Lyndon B. Johnson and Modern America by Kevin J. Fernlund Pdf

Born in a farmhouse in the Texas Hill Country, Lyndon Baines Johnson brought a western sensibility to the White House. Building on recent studies that have delved into Johnson’s Texas roots, Kevin J. Fernlund has written a brief, lively biography of the thirty-sixth president that better shows how his home state molded his early years—and how the one-time Houston schoolteacher eventually became a Texas tornado twisting across the state’s and soon the nation’s political landscape. Lyndon B. Johnson and Modern America offers a concise look at LBJ that shows how his career coincided with the ascendancy of American liberalism within a Cold War context. In particular, Fernlund extends recent observations regarding Johnson’s important role in regional transformation at a time when the South and West became full partners in the American economy. In examining LBJ’s promotion of the space program and his disastrous decision to escalate the war in Vietnam, Fernlund shows how these and other Johnson administration policies affected the American West. He describes how Johnson’s liberal agenda for the West became subverted by illiberal wars with enemies foreign and domestic, exposing the limits of liberalism and fostering the region’s nascent conservatism. He also compares Johnson’s commitment to social justice with that of his arch nemesis Ho Chi Minh, providing new insight for readers and an intriguing springboard for classroom discussion. Although subsequent presidents also hailed from the West, Fernlund argues that Johnson was our last truly western chief executive. This new approach to LBJ offers a novel reading of an important Texan, his huge circles of influence, and his lasting impact on the American scene.

Author : Sara L. Spurgeon
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : History
ISBN : 9781603445924

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Exploding the Western by Sara L. Spurgeon Pdf

The frontier and Western expansionism are so quintessentially a part of American history that the literature of the West and Southwest is in some senses the least regional and the most national literature of all. The frontier--the place where cultures meet and rewrite themselves upon each other's texts--continues to energize writers whose fiction evokes, destroys, and rebuilds the myth in ways that attract popular audiences and critics alike. Sara L. Spurgeon focuses on three writers whose works not only exemplify the kind of engagement with the theme of the frontier that modern authors make, but also show the range of cultural voices that are present in Southwestern literature: Cormac McCarthy, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ana Castillo. Her central purposes are to consider how the differing versions of the Western "mythic" tales are being recast in a globalized world and to examine the ways in which they challenge and accommodate increasingly fluid and even dangerous racial, cultural, and international borders. In Spurgeon's analysis, the spaces in which the works of these three writers collide offer some sharply differentiated visions but also create new and unsuspected forms, providing the most startling insights. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes tragic, the new myths are the expressions of the larger culture from which they spring, both a projection onto a troubled and troubling past and an insistent, prophetic vision of a shared future

Author : Robert B. Pippin
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 187 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2010-06-22
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780300145786

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Hollywood Westerns and American Myth by Robert B. Pippin Pdf

In this pathbreaking book one of America’s most distinguished philosophers brilliantly explores the status and authority of law and the nature of political allegiance through close readings of three classic Hollywood Westerns: Howard Hawks’ Red River and John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Searchers.Robert Pippin treats these films as sophisticated mythic accounts of a key moment in American history: its “second founding,” or the western expansion. His central question concerns how these films explore classical problems in political psychology, especially how the virtues of a commercial republic gained some hold on individuals at a time when the heroic and martial virtues were so important. Westerns, Pippin shows, raise central questions about the difference between private violence and revenge and the state’s claim to a legitimate monopoly on violence, and they show how these claims come to be experienced and accepted or rejected.Pippin’s account of the best Hollywood Westerns brings this genre into the center of the tradition of political thought, and his readings raise questions about political psychology and the political passions that have been neglected in contemporary political thought in favor of a limited concern with the question of legitimacy.

Author : Joe McElhaney
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 624 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2014-11-20
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781118587225

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A Companion to Fritz Lang by Joe McElhaney Pdf

This collection of critical essays offers an unrivalled andup-to-the-minute assessment of the prolific and resilient life andvision of one of cinema’s greatest auteurs. The first edited collection of essays on Fritz Lang’sbody of work in over thirty years A comprehensive assessment of one of cinema’s mostinfluential figures Brings together key scholars, including Tom Gunning and ChrisFujiwara, to share their latest insights Features translated contributions from writers rarely renderedin English such as Nicole Brenez and Paolo Berletto Offers multinational and multi-perspectival analysis ofLang’s oeuvre, including all his key films

Author : William Henry Katerberg
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015082652697

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Future West by William Henry Katerberg Pdf

What is the future of the American West? This book look at works of utopian, dystopian, and apocalyptic science fiction to show how narratives of the past and future powerfully shape our understanding of the present-day West.