The Image of the American West in contemporary Literature
At the initiative of the Damascus University English for Specific Purposes Center ( ESPC) and the American Cultural center in Damascus, a lecture was read on November 1st at the ESPC headquarters by Dr. Anthony Boyle; A US Fullbright and Researcher Faculty of Arts, English Department, Baath University, Homs.
In his Lecture which was under the title " the Image of the American West in Contemporary Literature," Dr. Boyle talked about the importance of the myth of the west in American national identity through examples from two contemporary American Novelists: Larry McCmurtry and Cormac McMarthy.
In his detailed lecture Dr Boyle said that in the United Stated, the west is a metaphor, an image, a myth. He explained that if North Americans are asked who they are, they might say that they are the offspring of the explorers, the pioneers and the settlers. That they are the descendants of those who were beckoned by the opportunities that the opening of the West created.
Dr Boyle noted the many original contributions the Americans have made to the development of science and technology' as the number of Nobel Prizes that Americans have won indicates.
He also indicated another unique cultural artifact is that the Western, those sagas that speak to something deep in the nation's soul. Or, may be, they rouse something in the soul of humanity- for the Western has been adapted or adopted by writers and film-makers in cultures and diverse as those of Japan and Italy> " O have no idea if there is a Syrian or a Damascus Western, but I know that there are films made by a number of Italian directors that are called Spaghetti westerns ," Dr. Boyle said, adding I know too that you can go to Hong Kong and see Chinese adaptations of the American western.
He made it clear that the myth of the west as the source of a sense of the American national character is a late nineteenth century creation, It came into being in reaction to the development of large cities and the rise of an industrial order that was replacing the farm at the center of the economic and social life of the Northeastern states. He explained that the myth has its origins in the work of the novelists who produced what were called dime novels. It also has its origins in the paintings and sculptures of Frederic Remington and in the spectacles created by a man called Buffalo Bill.
Dr. Boyle added that as the title of his talks makes clear, he wants to call the attention to novels by Larry MacMarthy and Cormac McCarthy, to Macmurtry's " the last picture show" and to McCarthy's " all the pretty horses." He said that these novels have attracted a wide audience and each has been adapted for the screen, a sign that they contain something that might prove compelling to an audience much larger than those who read. He said that both novels are set in the time immediately after the end of the Second World War; it was a time that marked a profound shift in the composition of American society. In the 1940 s and 1950 s, American ceased to be a society in which most people world off the land. In the war and post war years, American became a fully industrialized society and almost all parts of the country became integrated into the industrial order. He indicated:" If you have read Arthur Miller's " death of a Salesman," as students at al-Baath University are asked to in their third year of the study of English, you will recall that Miller too is concerned with this moment," he continued, adding " We might even call it a turning point in the history of America- it is a time when the old order passes.