The American Frontier in Popular Culture
The exploration, settlement, exploitation, and conflicts of the "American Old West" form a unique tapestry of events, which has been celebrated by Americans and foreigners alike—in art, music, dance, novels, magazines, short stories, poetry, theater, video games, movies, radio, television, song, and oral tradition—which continues in the modern era. Levy argues that the physical and mythological West inspired composers Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and Arthur Farwell.
The Frontier Thesis of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner, proclaimed in 1893, established the main lines of historiography which fashioned scholarship for three or four generations and appeared in the textbooks used by practically all American students.
Read more about this topic: American Frontier
Famous quotes containing the words american, frontier, popular and/or culture:
“The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow—one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)
“Kings govern by popular assemblies only when they cannot do without them.”
—Charles James Fox (1749–1806)
“It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)