Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Ole Edvart Rølvaag, Ann Moseley
Ole Edvart Rølvaag, Ann Moseley
Western Writers Series Digital Editions
Like the Norwegian folk hero the Ash Lad whom he was so fond of writing about, Ole Edvart Rølvaag's life and works can be seen as a search for the truth about himself and his world—both the Norwegian world whence he came and the American world to which he came. Combining realism with myth, Rølvaag explores the physical, psychological, and moral effects of Midwestern life on the immigrant pioneer as well as the rich mythic background that supports and universalizes the characters, structures, and themes of his fiction. In his analysis of the tension between Norwegian cultural traditions and the …
Helen Hunt Jackson, Rosemary Whitaker
Helen Hunt Jackson, Rosemary Whitaker
Western Writers Series Digital Editions
Amherst, Massachusetts, is noted as the birthplace of Emily Dickinson, universally recognized as one of America’s finest poets. Yet in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Amherst was better known as the birthplace of Helen Hunt Jackson, who had been a childhood friend of Emily Dickinson’s and had become a prominent writer while Dickinson remained in obscurity. Emily and Helen were two of the “Amherst girls,” an unusual group of offspring of Amherst College faculty, administrators, and trustees. One of the group, Emily Fowler, who acquired some brief notice as an author, wrote about her youth, “There was a …
Lanford Wilson, Mark Busby
Lanford Wilson, Mark Busby
Western Writers Series Digital Editions
Vincent, the main character in Lanford Wilson’s first Broadway play, The Gingham Dog, explains that he left his small Kentucky town for New York because he was “sick of small peopleambitions—hopes—small hopelessness,” and he thought that New Yorkers “could comprehend something outside themselves, respond.” It was perhaps a similar attraction that brought Lanford Wilson from a small farm near Ozark, Missouri, to the bright lights of the Great White Way, but just as Vincent eventually discovers, Wilson learned that continuing connections with one’s region remain. He also knows that coming home is not always wrapped in comfortable nostalgia. Nonetheless, …