American Studies ETDs

Publication Date

7-20-1972

Abstract

This is an innovative, interdisciplinary dissertation devoted to achieving new perspectives on that cluster of indigenous American myths known as the American Dream. My purpose is not to analyze, or to philosophize or to pontificate about, these myths, but rather to dramatize them: to show that they are an essential part of our history and cultural heritage, as is to be seen most cogently in the lives and writings of our major authors. I have, however, at no point shirked the fact that the writing of such a study involves a moral as well as an intellectual commit­ment: in brief, the belief not only that knowledge of the past is essential for any kind of responsible action in the present, but that any real knowledge of the past mist be emotional as well as intellectual: must stem from what Roy Harvey Pearce has called "a lived-through quality" that is, I believe, available to us only when we see just how profoundly the myths of our culture have affected the lives and the creative imaginations of our major writers. And while this study insists upon the need to know the past, it shows, too, that in America--uniquely, perhaps, among all nations--the past is the present: that, mythologi­cally speaking, there have been no "watersheds" in our history. For this reason this study is not limited histor­ically, but touches upon all American history from the Puritans to the present.

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

American Studies

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

American Studies

First Committee Member (Chair)

Joel M. Jones

Second Committee Member

Ferenc Morton Szasz

Third Committee Member

David A. Remley

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