Marriage, Violence and the Nation in the American Literary West (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 132)

ISBN: 052181667X

Author: Handley, William R.

Condition: New

William R. Handley examines literary interpretations of the Western American past. Handley asserts that although recent scholarship presents a narrative that counters optimistic frontier individualism by focusing on the victims of conquest, twentieth-century American fiction tells of intra-ethnic violence, involving marriages and families. He examines historiography and writing by Zane Grey, Willa Cather, Wallace Stegner and Joan Didion among others.