The Emergence of the American Frontier Hero 1682-1826 Gender, Action, and Emotion

by MacNeil, Denise Mary

• ISBN13: 9780230621503
• ISBN10: 0230621503
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-11-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book defines the previously unaddressed early evolution of the American frontier hero in literature and popular culture. Denise Mary MacNeil resituates the literary origins of this hero from the nineteenth century to the seventeenth century by tracing its roots to Mary Rowlandson's narration of her experiences as a prisoner. This study follows the subsequent evolution through works by Unca Eliza Winkfield, Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, film-maker John Ford, and actor John Wayne. This book exposes complex gender and racial roots and clarifies a cultural stereotype that has become one of those most highly coded as white and masculine within American literature and culture. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Denise MacNeil is Assistant Professor at the University of Redlands. 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
The American Frontier Hero in Mary Rowlandson's Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration	p. 1
Mythological Roots of the American Frontier Hero	p. 15
Mary Rowlandson, Puritan Hero	p. 39
Mothering the Adamic Hero	p. 63
Transcending Gendered English American Social Positions: Gender and Racial Multiplicity in The Female American; or, the Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield	p. 83
Dancing between Ferocity and Delicacy in Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown	p. 101
Reconstituting the American Frontier Hero through James Fenimore Cooper's Natty Bumppo in The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757	p. 133
Mary Rowlandson in Jeans: The John Ford/John Wayne Film The Searchers and the Mary Rowlandson Archetype	p. 157
Relationship of the American Frontier Hero to the "Threshold of Adventure" and the Adventure Cycle (Campbell 245-246)	p. 159
Notes	p. 191
Works Cited	p. 209
Index	p. 215
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.