Wilderness and interference: Images of the trail in American literature.
Item
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Title
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Wilderness and interference: Images of the trail in American literature.
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Identifier
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AAI9130351
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identifier
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9130351
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Creator
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McQuillan, Gene Peter.
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Contributor
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Adviser: William Kelly
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Date
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1991
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American | American Studies
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Abstract
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Wilderness has been one of the determining forces in American culture. In particular, the confrontation with wilderness has provided an essential theme for major American writers, ranging from James Fenimore Cooper and Henry David Thoreau to Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. This dissertation examines the ways in which wilderness continues to influence American writing. It re-examines Frederick Jackson Turner's claim that the Frontier had "closed" in 1890 by delineating the ways in which changing ideas about land use, ecology, aesthetics, and pastoralism have contributed to drastically different conceptions of "wilderness." It also challenges the claims of certain literary scholars who assert that the closure of the Frontier in 1890 is linked to a similar closure of literary possibilities involving American landscape, history, and travel. Whenever possible, abstract issues about wilderness and writing are clarified by references to actual wilderness trails. Trails represent many of the contradictions in modern wilderness experience. Trails provide more than just convenient paths: they are also an authorization of certain aesthetic responses, of particular viewpoints, of various ecological hierarchies, of distinct literary methods. The writings of John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Barry Lopez, as well as the scholarship of Roderick Nash, Leo Marx, Annette Kolodny, and Richard Slotkin, provide ample evidence that wilderness continues to have a direct and vital impact on America culture and literature.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
