Literature of the American West

List of contents

All chapters begin with an Introduction and conclude with Topics for Research and Writing.

Introduction.
I. FOUNDATIONS FOR A WESTERN MYTHOLOGY.
1. Mapping the Terrain.

Emmanuel Leutze, Across the Continent, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (1861).

Hector St. John (DeCrevecoeur), What Is an American? from Letters of an American Farmer (1782).

Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893).

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, from The Journals (1806/1905).

Bret Harte, The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1870).

Focus on Film: John Ford (director), Stagecoach (1939).
2. Crossing Frontiers.

George Catlin, Buffalo Bull's Backfat, Head Chief, Blood Tribe (1832).

Lewis Garrard, The Village from Wah-to-Yah and the Taos Trail (1850).

Karl Bodmer, Bison Dance of the Mandan Indians (1836).

Edward Ellis, from Seth Jones; or, The Captives of the Frontier (1860).

George Caleb Bingham, The Concealed Enemy (1845).

Oliver La Farge, The Young Warrior (1938).

A. B. Guthrie, Mountain Medicine (1947).

William Tylee Ranney, Advice on the Prairie (1853).

Focus on Film: Elliot Silverstein (director), A Man Called Horse (1970).
3. Working the Land.

N. C. Wyeth, Rounding Up (1904).

Owen Wister, The Jimmyjohn Boss (1900).

Charles Schryvogel, The Summit Springs Rescue (1869).

Frederic Remington, A Dash for the Timber (1889).

Cassily Adams and Otto Becker, Custer's Last Fight (1896).

Willa Cather, El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional (1901).

Charley Russell, Smoke of a .45 (1908).

Zane Grey, The Ranger (1927).

Focus on Film: Howard Hawks (director), Red River (1948).
4. Spiritual Landscapes.

Asher Durand, Kindred Spirits (1849).

Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Mountains (1868).

John Muir, from My First Summer in the Sierra (1869/1911).

Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872).

Gilber Munger, Eocene Bluffs, Green River, Wyoming (1878).

Edward S. Curtis, Canon de Chelly-Navaho (1904).

Georgia O'Keefe, Mule's Skull with Pink Poinsettas (1936).

Focus on Film: Lawrence Hott and Diane Garey (directors), The Wilderness Idea (1990).
II. CHALLENGES TO A WESTERN MYTHOLOGY.
5. Satires and Entertainments.

Beadle's New York Dime Library, Kit Carson (book cover 1878).

Mark Twain, from Roughing It (1872).

Great Wild West Exhibition (1883).

Stephen Crane, The Blue Hotel (1898).

Dorothy Johnson, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1949).

James Earle Fraser, The End of the Trail (1915).

Thomas Schatz, The Western from Hollywood Genres (1981).

Focus on Film: Robert Altman (director), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971).
6. Women in the West.

Angeline Mitchell Brown, from Diary of a School Teacher in the Arizona Frontier (1881/1990)

W. H. D. Koerner, Madonna of the Prairie (1922).

Mary Hunter Austin, The Fakir, and The Walking Woman from Lost Borders (1909).

Sui Sin Far, In the Land of the Free, (1909)

Linda Hassselstrom, Spring, Seasons in Dakota, and Dakota Homesteading (1992).

Evelyn Schlatter, Drag's a Life: Women, Gender, and Cross-Dressing in the Nineteenth-Century West (1997).

Focus on Film: King Vidor (director), Duel in the Sun (1946).
7. Native American Images and Voices.

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, from Life Among the Piutes (1883).

Salish Handbag (ca. 1915).

N. Scott Momaday, from The Priest of the Sun, House Made of Dawn (1968).

Ray Young Bear, Morning Talking Mother (1980), The Language of Weather (1990).

David Bradley, American Indian Gothic (1983).

Louise Erdich, Indian Boarding School: The Runaways (1984).

Diane Glancy, Black Kettle National Grasslands, Western Oklohoma (1988).

Mary Brave Bird, Civilize Them with a Stick from Lakota Woman (1990).

Diane Glories, Black Kettle National Grasslands, Western Oklahoma (1988).

Bennie Buffalo, Cheyenne in the Moon (1991).

Sherman Alexie, How to Write the Great American Indian Novel (1996).

Focus on Film: Chris Eyre (director), Smoke Signals (1998).
8. The New West.

Wakako Yamauchi, And the Soul Shall Dance (1974).

Raymond Barro, The Campesinos from the Plum, Plum Pickers (1996).

Richard Hugo, Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg and Duwamish (1984).

William Kittredge, Redneck Secrets from Owning It All (1987).

Linda Hogan, A Different Yield from Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World (1995).

Focus on Film: John Huston (director), The Misfits (1961).

Summary

Literature of the American West is an anthology of both “literary” and popular fiction, historical personal narratives, contemporary reflective essays, and critical perspectives on the images, literatures, and films of the American West.
This distinctive text will enliven and deepen students' understanding and appreciation of the literature, values, ideals, and perceptions of the American West. It moves beyond the traditional literary canon to incorporate pop culture, historical, multi-ethnic, and multi-media approaches. Including stories from popular Western authors such as Zane Grey and Dorothy Johnson, as well as Native American authors such as N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko, this text significantly expands the group of works typically studied in mainstream American literature surveys.

Product details

• Authors: Greg Lyons
• Publisher: Pearson Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2003
• EAN: 9780205324613
• ISBN: 978-0-205-32461-3
• No. of pages: 496
• Weight: 580 g
• Series: Longman; Longman
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies