Regeneration through violence : the mythology of the American frontier, 1600-1860

1 Myth and literature in a new world. 2 Cannibals and Christians: European vs. American Indian culture. 3 A home in the heart of darkness: the origin of the Indian War Narratives (1625-1682). 4 Israel in Babylon: the archetype of the Captivity Narratives (1682-1700). 5 A palisade of language: captivity mythology and the social crisis (1688-1693). 6 The hunting of the beast: initiation or exorcism? (1675-1725). 7 The search for a hero and the problem of the "Natural Man" (1700-1765). 8 A gallery of types: the evolution of literary genres and the image of the American (1755-1785). 9 Narrative into myth: the emergence of a hero (1784). 10 Evolution of the national hero: farmer to hunter to Indian (1784-1855). 11 Society and solitude: the frontier myth in Romantic literature (1795-1825). 12 The fragmented image: the Boone myth and sectional cultures (1820-1850). 13 Man without a cross: the leatherstocking myth (1823-1841). 14 A pyramid of skulls

'...Few...will dispute that he has convincingly demonstrated the influence of frontier mythology as a major force shaping the nation's literary outpourings between 1520 and the 1850s, or that the traditions evolved from the hunter-hero myths that he describes so expertly provide a structuring metaphor for a study of the evolution of the national character.'

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