Synopsis:
With roots going back to Europe's discovery of the New World, frontier literature chronicles no less than the settling of America. Now a timely reference work presents this literature in all of its diversity, allowing readers to experience the myriad of creative responses evoked by the promise of the new frontier.
The Encyclopedia of Frontier Literature surveys 400 years of North American frontier literature, presenting dominant themes, biographies, literary history and analysis, genres, writers, titles, and characters as a method of defining and exemplifying the vast trove of literature about the continents exploration and settlement. From novels, short stories, and poetry to theater, oratory, outdoor dramas, songs, biographies, diaries, journals, and logbooks, frontier literature is characterized by its rich expression of human experience. In the 94 A-Z entries in this volume, readers will find coverage of dozens of authors and hundreds of works as well as eyewitness accounts by ordinary people, from the action-packed autobiography of former slave James Beckwourth, the novels of Edna Ferber and Mari Sandoz, and the speeches of Kiowa chief Satanta to Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail and Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove. The Encyclopedia also includes helpful chronologies, lists of major works and authors, cross-references beneath each entry, primary sources, filmographies, and a bibliography offering additional commentary.
A perusal of the Encyclopedia of Frontier Literature offers the researcher, reader, writer, and teacher a compelling reason to sample several points of view and to contemplate the romance that still clings to the Old West. Taken as a whole, frontier literature is as rich, varied, and satisfying as any branch of written and spoken art.
From the Back Cover:
The Encyclopedia of Frontier Literature surveys 400 years of North American frontier literature. Within this literary context, the roles of women and minorities are given special attention, as is the expansion of the American West. The sheer scope of frontier literature is striking; this genre belongs as much to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Fenimore Cooper as it does to Willa Cather and Jessamyn West. From novels, short stories, and poetry to theater, oratory, outdoor dramas, songs, biographies, diaries, journals, and logbooks, frontier literature is characterized and unified by its rich expression of human experience. In the 94 alphabetized entries in this volume, readers will find dozens of authors and hundreds of works represented, as well as biographies, key concepts, terms, geographic locations, literary motifs, and dominant themes, including Explorers of the Frontier, Law and Order, Native Americans in Literature, Naturalists, and Poetry of the Frontier.
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