Marriage, violence, and the nation in the American literary West

Resource Information

The work Marriage, violence, and the nation in the American literary West represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Marriage, violence, and the nation in the American literary West

Statement of responsibility

William R. Handley

Creator

• Handley, William R

Subject

• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Domestic fiction, American -- History and criticism
• Family violence in literature
• Frontier and pioneer life in literature
• Marriage in literature
• National characteristics, American, in literature
• Novelists, American -- Homes and haunts -- West (U.S.)
• Violence in literature
• West (U.S.) -- In literature
• Western stories -- History and criticism
• Women pioneers in literature
• American literature -- West (U.S.) -- History and criticism

Genre

• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

"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

Member of

• Cambridge studies in American literature and culture

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

810.9/3278

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

PS271

LC item number

.H29 2002

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture