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Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth

Book by Henry Nash Smith · 1 quotes · American West, Alexis De Tocqueville, American Frontier

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Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth Quotes

“In the decade following the Civil War the impetus of the westward movement and the implied pledge of the victorious Republican Party to develop the West were uncontrollable forces urging the agricultural frontier forward. On the level of the imagination it was therefore necessary that the settlers' battle with drought and dust and wind and grasshoppers should be supported by the westward expansion of the myth of the garden. In order to establish itself in the vast new area of the plains, however, the myth of the garden had to confront and overcome another myth of exactly opposed meaning, although of inferior strength - the myth of the Great American Desert.”

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Book:Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
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