The characteristic landscapes of the American West and the West of Ireland have generated flows between local and global processes of national discourses and gender composition, which inform the representation of landscapes in film and fiction. This study focuses on the way a geocultural imaginary informs and constructs meaning about specific landscapes, and how ideas about nation and gender are filtered through cinematic and literary production in relation to such landscapes. Looking west towards the open range of the American West and towards the Irish-speaking Gaeltacht in Ireland is not so much about following the points of the compass as it is about converting geographical places into culturally signifying spaces. The bulk of the study focuses on the American West. The final chapter examines the West of Ireland as a repository of folklore and Irishness during Irish cultural nationalism, thus offering a counterpoint to the construction of the American West. The major texts discussed in relation to the American West are Brokeback Mountain, Holes, The Virginian, and Riders of the Purple Sage. The films on Ireland are Angela's Ashes, The Secret of Roan Inish, and Into the West. The overall aim is to examine how the American and the Irish West are represented as constituent parts of contemporary narratives, how the mythic west gets processed in modern narratives, and to suggest that the rhizomatic sproutings of feminist and minority issues in contemporary western narratives are symptomatic of larger fields of ideological critique in a global flow.
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