Virgin Land

Download or read book Virgin Land written by Henry Nash Smith and published by Cambridge : Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1950 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The spell that the West has always exercised on the American people had its most intense impact on American literature and thought during the nineteenth century. Smith shows, with vast comprehension, the influence of the nineteenth-century West in all its variety and strength, in special relation to social, economic, cultural, and political forces. He traces the myths and symbols of the Westward movement such as the general notion of a Westward-moving Course of Empire, the Wild Western hero, the virtuous yeoman-farmer--in such varied nineteenth-century writings as Leaves of Grass, the great corpus of Dime Novels, and most notably, Frederick Jackson Turner's The Frontier in American History. Moreover, he synthesizesthe imaginative expression of Westernmyths and symbols in literature withtheir role in contemporary politics,economics, and society, embodiedin such forms as the idea of ManifestDestiny, the conflict in the Americanmind between idealizations of primitivism on the one hand and of progressand civilization on the other, theHomestead Act of 1862, and public-land policy after the Civil War. The myths of the American Westthat found their expression in nineteenth-century words and deeds remaina part of every American's heritage,and Smith, with his insightinto their power and significance,makes possible a critical appreciation of that heritage.

Download or read book From Virgin Land to Disney World written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-22 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the publication in English in 1930 of Civilization and its Discontents and its thesis that instinct – and, ultimately: nature – had been and must be forever subordinated in order that civilization might thrive and endure, Freud contributed what some contemporaries saw to the central debate of his era – a debate which had long preoccupied both official American pundits and the American populace at large. At the beginning of the new Millennium, evidence abounds that an American debate still rages over the meaning of “nature,” the rightful weight of instinct, and the status of civilization. The Millennium itself has appeared in popular and official discourses as an appropriate marker of an age in which nature is close to the edge of radical extinction and has also become more and more unreliable as a paradigm for representation and debate. At the same time, the contemporary tailoring of nature to postmodern needs and expectations inevitably reveals the conceptual difficulty of any possible, simple opposition between nature and culture as if they were clearly distinguishable domains. If nature, then, can clearly be seen as a discursive concept, it may also be a timeless concept insofar that it has been shaped, created, and used at all times. Every epoch, age and era had “its own nature,” with myth, history and ideology as its dominant shaping forces. From the Frontier to Cyberia, nature has been suffering the “agony of the real,” resurfacing in discursive strategies and demonstrating a powerful impact on American society, culture and self-definition. The essays in this collection “speak critically of the natural” and examine the American debate in the many guises it has assumed over the last century within the context of major critical approaches, psychoanalytical concepts, and postmodern theorizing.

Download or read book Counternarrative Possibilities written by James Dorson and published by Campus Verlag. This book was released on 2016-06-09 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counternarrative Possibilities reads Cormac McCarthy's Westerns against the backdrop of two formative tropes in American mythology: virgin land (from the 1950s) and homeland (after '9/11' ). Looking at McCarthy's Westerns in the context of American Studies, James Dorson shows how his novels counter the national narratives underlying these tropes and reinvest them with new, potentially transformative meaning. Departing from prevailing accounts of McCarthy that place him in relation to his literary antecedents, Counternarrative Possibilities takes a forwardlooking approach that reads McCarthy's work as a key influence on millennial fiction. Weaving together disciplinary history with longstanding debates over the relationship between aesthetics and politics, this book is at once an exploration of the limits of ideology critique in the twenty-first century and an original reconsideration of McCarthy's work 'after postmodernism'.

Download or read book A History of Private Life: Passions of the Renaissance written by and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 678 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Library has Vol. 1-5.

Download or read book Fencing America written by Ann Heide and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-24 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This coming-to-America novel introduces men and women who were among the first to leave England and build new lives in the New World. We accompany them as they pursue their DREAMS, face unimaginable DANGERS, and find ROMANCE. It's 1629, and widower SIMON HOYT takes his three sons in search of free land and independence. He soon discovers he can't claim land until he becomes an official member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Will he take the Freeman Oath and give up his independence? And what of his attraction to the widow Susannah? Their love seems impossible as she's engaged to someone else. A year later, in 1630, NICHOLAS and ELINOR KNAPP board the Arbella, flagship of the Winthrop Fleet. Their hastily arranged marriage has qualified them to join the new colony in America. After a difficult two months spent crossing the Atlantic Ocean, they reach Salem Harbor and believe the worst is behind them. But is it? This historical novel highlights the many personal sacrifices required of the first colonists to settle in New England. We see them fight to stay alive through the "starving months." At times, their lives conflict with the strict rules of the Puritan and Pilgrim governments. And we glimpse struggles endured by the native population. Virgin Land, 1629, is the first of three novels in the Fencing America saga. Throughout the series, Ann Pontrelli weaves her family genealogy into historical events, letting their stories give us a deeper understanding of the people who fenced the land and transformed a continent.

Download or read book THE LAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN written by WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Virgin Earth written by Philippa Gregory and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-04-05 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A colonist in Virginia falls for a Powhatan girl, and is drawn by their respect for nature.