She's Filled With Secrets: the Mythology of Landscape in the American Western

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dc.contributorStaiti, Paul
dc.contributorQuillian, William
dc.contributor.advisorWeber, Donald
dc.contributor.advisorYoung, Elizabeth
dc.contributor.authorOliver, Genevieve Marie
dc.date.accessioned2013-05-03T18:17:52Z
dc.date.available2013-05-03T18:17:52Z
dc.date.gradyear2013en_US
dc.date.issued2013-05-03
dc.description.abstractAmericans are heirs to a weighty, complex system of mythology surrounding landscape. The film, literary, and artistic genre of the Western encompasses the classic system of this mythology: that American space exists for use by American men. In the classic Western, space is related through an abstracted Taming of the Shrew metaphor – the tough, virginal, feminized landscape puts up a fight, but finally, inevitably, yields to the touch of the right, hardy, masculine hero. In my research, I focus on the ways in which many contemporary artists problematize the classic Western’s mythology surrounding landscape, contributing to the development of a neomyth, a revised, updated, “modernized” system of mythology. If the classic Western’s landscape myth, arguably the founding element of American mythology, can effectively be subverted, the complete legacy of American mythology (and thus, American culture) is destabilized. Thus, neomythic treatment of landscape in Westerns reveals a haunting set of problematics and anxieties that lurk beneath the surface of American mythology and culture. By contrasting the landscapes of the classic myth with those of neomythic texts, and relating the development of a neomyth to concealed colonial histories, one can extract from American mythology the nature of the most omnipresent American fear – complete extinction.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipEnglishen_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10166/3216
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.rights.restrictedpublicen_US
dc.subjectEnglishen_US
dc.subjectart historyen_US
dc.subjectAmerican studiesen_US
dc.subjectwesternsen_US
dc.subjectwestern filmsen_US
dc.subjectlandscapeen_US
dc.subjectmythologyen_US
dc.subjectAmerican Southwesten_US
dc.subjectPacific Northwesten_US
dc.subjectnew western historyen_US
dc.subjectCaliforniaen_US
dc.subjectTwin Peaksen_US
dc.subjectCormac McCarthyen_US
dc.subjectJoan Didionen_US
dc.subjectBret Easton Ellisen_US
dc.subjectNathanael Westen_US
dc.titleShe's Filled With Secrets: the Mythology of Landscape in the American Westernen_US
dc.typeThesis
mhc.degreeUndergraduateen_US
mhc.institutionMount Holyoke College

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