Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2004
Abstract
Its promise to revolutionize western studies aside, Nathaniel Lewis's Unsettling the Literary West offers several smart readings of western texts along with a unique analytical approach to the field. Lewis's central claim is that as early as the 1830s writers of western literature felt an undue obligation to capture the "true West," to produce books that stressed accurate renditions of landscape, and, however exaggerated, to claim real-world credentials to substantiate their observations. Though most of these writers understood absolute realism to be impossible, they were performing for eastern audiences whose interest lay not in artistic perception but in the "genuine" frontier. The result was a literature that "suppress[ed] the imaginative power of authors and the discursive play of language" and compelled critics to read western books more as cultural history than art.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 24:3 (Summer 2004). Copyright © 2004 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.