Volume 32, Number 18 · November 21, 1985
Redemption Through Violence
By George M. Fredrickson
The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890
by Richard Slotkin
Atheneum, 636 pp., $37.50
During the years immediately after World War II, a cross-disciplinary field called 'American Studies' or 'American Civilization' gained a place in the curriculum of many universities. The leaders of this movement were for the most part professors and students of American literature who felt constrained by the ahistorical 'new criticism' and the limited attention paid to American writers in the standard English program. Instead of viewing American literature in relation to British literary traditions, they chose to study the broader American culture of which literature was seen as a major reflection. To a considerable extent their subject matter became that culture itself rather than the few acknowledged masterpieces of American poetry and prose, and they therefore paid increasing attention to popular fiction, polemical writing, oratory, and other forms of expression that were of dubious literary merit but could be read as providing clues to widely held American beliefs and attitudes. A principal tool for interpreting these materials was the concept of 'myth'—stereotyped images and stories that appear to convey the central values and concerns of a culture.
Review, 3843 words
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