RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 The American waste: a new take on the conquest of the West in Paul Auster’s novel "Travels in the Scriptorium"
T2 El desecho americano: una nueva versión de la conquista del Oeste en la novela "Travels in the Scriptorium" de Paul Auster
A1 Studniarz, Sławomir
K1 Alternative history
K1 Counterfactual
K1 Embedded narrative
K1 The errand into the wilderness
K1 American specialness
K1 The myth of the West
K1 Historia alternativa
K1 Contrafactual
K1 Narrativa incrustada
K1 La misión en el desierto
K1 La singularidad americana
K1 El mito del Oeste
K1 Literatura
K1 Literature
K1 Medio ambiente
K1 Environmental science
K1 info:eu-repo/semantics/article
AB The subject of the article is the 2006 novel "Travels in the Scriptorium" by Paul Auster, which contains an embedded story, presenting the alternative history of the USA. The article aims to demonstrate that Auster’s novel offers a revision of two essential myths of the American nation. The precise moment in the history of the USA that Auster’s novel reinvents is the time before the Mexican War and before taking over the Southwest and California. The Mexican War and its political consequences marked the transition of the USA from a republic upholding its libertarian and progressive ideals to an invading imperial power. The shift in the American policy toward its neighboring nations and peoples is reflected in Auster’s novel in the presentation of the westward expansion as a brutal invasion. Auster’s novel heavily revises the two formative myths of the American state, the myth of the West and the “errand in the wilderness,” with Manifest Destiny as its later incarnation justifying the imperialist mission. The wilderness itself is divested of spiritual significance, desacralized, as the Alien Territories are converted into the arena of carnage and indiscriminate slaughter. It is unreservedly sacrificed to the interests of the emerging imperialist enterprise, which is nothing less than the ultimate consequence of the original Puritan venture—the taming of the wilderness and the creation of a model Christian state for the rest of the world to admire.
PB Universidad de Alcalá
SN 2171-9594
YR 2018
FD 2018
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10017/34805
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10017/34805
LA eng
DS MINDS@UW
RD 27-abr-2024