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Myth and Realism in Recent Criticism of the American Literary West

Although the vast American West, with its indefinite boundaries, has provided the inspiration and setting for countless narratives, it was not until the late 1920s, as Richard W. Etulain has indicated, that the first significant criticism of Western literature appeared.1 The work of Franklin Walker exemplifies this first phase of criticism, in which Western literature was discussed chiefly in terms of biography and historical backgrounds.2 After 1950, Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth became the major influence, with its dual emphases on the mythic and symbolic value of the West and on the cultural in sights to be gained from a study of popular, usually ephemeral, literature. Etulain points out that in the 1960s a great surge of interest developed in Western literature studies, as can be seen in the multitude of new critical books and essays published and in the appearance of two new journals (South Dakota Review and Western American Literature) expressly devoted to the study of Western American letters. As a result, he concludes that "Western literary studies are no longer in their adolescent stage; they have taken on a new maturity." Though Etulain's belief in their maturity may have been a little premature on behalf of the bicentennial, the publication in 1980 of John R. Milton's long-awaited study, The Novel of the