Riding the formula Western subgenre over the divide between popular literature and 'high' literature: Genre influence in the Western American novel

This dissertation examines the relationship between two subgenres of the 20th-century American novel, the formula western subgenre and the western American novel subgenre. Historically, the differences between these two groups of texts have been described primarily in terms of their status, respectively, as popular literature and so called “high” literature. In the complicated process by which a culture disseminates fictional narratives certain authors and groups of texts become associated with popular literature, and certain other authors and groups of texts become associated with “high” literature.; Contemporary theory has been chipping away at the “wall” dividing popular literature from so called “high” literature for some time, of course, and this dissertation takes as one of its premises the by now fairly uncontroversial view that popular literature does in fact affect “high” literature. What follows from this view, however, may not be so uncontroversial: The specific characteristics of certain subcategories of popular literature (in this case, the formula western subgenre), I maintain, influence the specific characteristics of certain subcategories of “high” literature (in this case, the western American novel subgenre). This dissertation places the author at the center of the relationship between the formula western subgenre and the western American novel subgenre, as a kind of conduit through which the stuff of literary innovation and diversification flows.; Complicating the view that the formula western subgenre has influenced the western American novel subgenre is the tension between regionalism and nationalism in the never-ending project of defining the national literatures. Scholars of western American literature have complained of an institutional bias that has systematically devalued their field of study. They not only complain that their scholarship, which is generated outside of the eastern power-center for the most part, gets overlooked by book and journal publishers but also that literature produced by western authors gets overlooked by scholars and critics located in or oriented toward the east. In addition to describing and analyzing the primary texts, then, this dissertation seeks to address this tension in the institution of higher learning by arguing for the importance of genre influence.