Wilderness and Wall Street: Privilege, Community, and Restraint in Literature of the New York Frontier
In the American Studies tradition, the frontier has long been equated with unfettered individualism---imagined in symbolic opposition to the restraint on individual action required by community. The current study reconsiders the role of literature in promoting frontier individualism at the expense of frontier community. I argue that the early-industrial trial preference for frontier individualism masks an older commitment to community building, that the tension between community and individualism carries a strong class component, and that the dominant nineteenth-century aesthetic response to the frontier promotes the agenda of economic elitism.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign