The Frontier in American Literature                                             אזור הספר בספרות אמריקנית

Dr. Nir Evron                                                                                                       ד"ר ניר עברון

BA seminar                                                                                                           סמינר בי. אי

Frederick Jackson Turner had famously argued that the distinctiveness of the American character is to be sought in the experience of the frontier. In the background of this statement by one of the nation’s most prominent 19th-century historians lay a large corpus of literary writing committed to the mythologizing of the frontier. This seminar will be devoted to the study of some of the most influential of these early frontier-myths, as well of later, more critical, renditions of the theme. We will seek to define the idea of the frontier, and ask about the different ways it has been used as a literary-cultural tool for handling the pressures of contradictions that have defined American history, from the Colonial Period to the present.

Tentative list of authors:

Mary Rowlandson, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Hamlin Garland, Bret Harte, Willa Cather, Stephen Crane, Owen Wister, Cormac McCarthy, Zane Grey and others.