| Popis: |
Representations of the frontier through the early twentieth century have been subject to two sets of critical criteria: the conventional aesthetic expectations of the particular genres and forms in which westerns are produced, and the popular cultural demand for imitative “authenticity” or faithfulness to the “real west.” “In the Flesh” probes how literary history is bound up with the history of performance westerns that establish the criteria of “authenticity” that text westerns seek to fulfill. The dissertation demonstrates how the impulse to verify western authenticity is part of a post-Civil War American nationalism that locates the frontier as the paradigmatic American socio-topography. It argues that westerns produced in a variety of media sought to distance themselves from their status as art forms subject to the critical standards of particular genres and to represent themselves as faithful transcriptions of popular frontier history. The primary signifier of historicity in all these forms is the technical ability to represent authentic bodies capable of performing that history. Postbellum westerns, in short, seek to show their audiences history embodied “in the flesh” of western performers. “In the Flesh” is therefore divided into two sections: the first analyzes performance westerns, including stage drama, Wild West, and film, that place bodies on display for the immediate appraisal of audiences. Section two examines text westerns, including dime novels and Owen Wister’s “The Virginian,” that are constrained to appropriate the conventions of performance to “display” in writing the bodies of their “authentic” western characters. |
