Author: Dorothy Anne Dondore

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-07-24

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 9780282533229

Excerpt from The Prairie and Making of Middle America: Four Centuries of Description This first book, a unit in itself, outlines the treatment of the Middle West, that rich agricultural region of which the distino tive feature is the Prairie, from the time of its discovery to the present day. The first thing that the study should prove is that, in spite of Emerson's and others' denials, this section has been the subject of numerous and varied interpretations which have reflected all stages of its life. It should further demonstrate the futility of facile generalization concerning the frontier since types from one section were carried over to another and since European romantic traditions shaped many border concepts. The inclusion of historical source materials, ordinarily neglected by the literary historian, will show, I believe, a constant interplay between them and the imaginative treatments, the latter using familiar situations and figures, the former being adorned by some of the most famous creations of the romancers. The survey has been carried beyond the frontier stage to reveal the continu ity of tendencies and the significance for social history of the literary treatments of the prairie, regardless of their aesthetic value, which is in many cases relatively slight. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.