A Bibliographical Guide To The Study Of Western American Literature

The recentness of most listings in this bibliography illustrates the growing interest in western literature in the last decades.

This fifth revised edition features approximately 1,900 items, most of which are annotated. It addresses several interdisciplinary studies that have become prominent in the last decade, especially on popular culture, racial and other minorities, Native Americans and Chicanos, and literary regionalism. It allots more space to computer aids, science fiction, children's literature, literature of the sea, film and literature, and linguistic studies of American English and includes a new section on psychology. The appendix lists the biography of each of 135 deceased American authors. ISBN 0-8223-0592-5 : $22.50 (For use only in the library).

The revised and updated edition of this standard reference work in the field of Western American Literature now contains over 6,000 bibliographic references. The topical listings have been expanded to encompass feminist and environmental studies. Rather than attempting to be exhaustive, the editors have chosen the major interpretive works, making the volume useful to both specialists working outside their area and nonspecialists seeking an overview. Broad in its scope, the guide also focuses on a number of special topics: local color and regionalism, popular western literature, western film, Indian literature and Indians in western literature, the environment, women and families, the Beats, and Canadian western literature. Logically and helpfully organized, the volume will be invaluable to scholars, researchers, students, and general readers.

This bibliography is a starting point for those interested in researching the American Indian in literature or American Indian literature. Designed to augment other major bibliographies, it classifies all relevant bibliographies and critical works and supplies listings not cited by them. The author's general introduction provides bibliographical background for those beginning research in the field. Cited works are listed alphabetically by the author's or editor's last name in each of three categories: bibliographies; works about the Indian in literature; and Indian literature. Each citation is numbered and the cross-referenced subject and author indexes refer to each work by number, thereby facilitating speedy reference.

Literary histories, of course, do not have a reason for being unless there exists the literature itself. This volume, perhaps more than others of its kind, is an expression of appreciation for the talented and dedicated literary artists who ignored the odds, avoided temptations to write for popularity or prestige, and chose to write honestly about the American West, believing that experiences long knowns to be of historical importance are also experiences that need and deserve a literature of importance.

To this structural analysis he adds a new account of the genre's history and its relationship to the myths of the West which have played such an influential role in American history."--BOOK JACKET.