Stories of Old: The Imagined West & the Crisis of Historical Symbology in the 1970s (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis Studia An Series, 106)

What happened to the American West as a cultural expression in the 1970s? Despite proclamations of its death, as a collection of representations the West continued to provide writers with material for the negotiation of American history and identity. But it was a distinctly different West that emerged from the pages of such writers as Don DeLillo, Robert Coover, Jean Didlen, and Tom Wolfe. In this study, the imagined West of these writers and of others who employed images of the past in literature, movies, political rhetoric, commercial enterprises, and historiographical writing comes under scrutiny. It is an analysis of a historical symbolism that was of critical importance to the construction of national identity during a time of cultural and social instability.