This dissertation addresses the work of John Graves, Stephen Harrigan, Larry McMurtry, and Americo Paredes as twentieth-century Texas authors who engage and reshape the Anglo-Texas mythology. My analysis relies on Richard Slotkin's definition of mythology as "a complex of narratives that dramatizes the world vision and historical sense of a people or culture, reducing centuries of experience into a constellation of compelling metaphors." Each chapter contextualizes historical and cultural representations of three specific myths, or narratives, that metaphorically shape the worldview of the Anglo-Texan people---the Landscape Myth, the Hero Myths, and the Liberty Myth---within the mythological framework constructed by Slotkin and Philip Wheelwright. I argue that these three myths that make up the constellation of the Anglo-Texas mythology are employed by generations of Anglo-Texan settlers and Americans to rationalize and justify the imperial projects in Texas and indeed, the larger Southwest, and that the studied contemporary authors advocate a values shift, or a "consummatory myth," that re-signifies the ideological projects of earlier myth artists.
展开▼
