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    Pioneering the Social Imagination: Literary Landscapes of the American West, 1872-1968

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    Genre
    Thesis/Dissertation
    Date
    2016
    Author
    Hudgins, Caitlin
    Advisor
    Orvell, Miles
    Committee member
    Salazar, James B.
    Lee, Sue-Im, 1969-
    Isenberg, Andrew C. (Andrew Christian)
    Department
    English
    Subject
    Literature
    Landscape Architecture
    History
    Frontier
    Imagination
    Land
    Landscape
    Literature
    West
    Permanent link to this record
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/3036
    
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    DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/3018
    Abstract
    This dissertation investigates why literary dreams of the West have been categorically dismissed as mythical. Western critics and authors, ranging from Thomas Jefferson to Owen Wister to Patricia Nelson Limerick, have sought to override dreams of the West by representing the western genre as, in Jane Tompkins’ words, a “craving for material reality.” This focus on authenticity betrays an antipathy to the imagination, which is often assumed to be fantastical, escapist, or utopian – groundless, and therefore useless. Such a prejudice, however, has blinded scholars to the value of the dreams of western literary characters. My project argues that the western imagination, far from constituting a withdrawal from reality, is worthy of critical attention because it is grounded in the land itself: the state of the land is directly correlated to a character’s ability to formulate a reliable vision of his setting, and this image can enable or disable agency in that space. By investigating changes in western land practices such as gold-mining, homesteading, and transportation, I show that the ways characters imagine western landscapes not only model historical interpretations of the West but also allow for literary explorations of potential responses to the land’s real social, political, and economic conditions. This act of imagining, premised on Louis Althusser’s explanation of ideology, follows Arjun Appadurai’s conception of the imagination as “social practice.” Ultimately, my dissertation explores geographical visions in western novels across the 20th century in order to demonstrate the imagination’s vital historical function in the creation of the West.
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