| This dissertation reconceptualizes the late twentieth-century Western, positing it as social commentary and as self-reflective, critiquing the very genre of which it is a part. It is meta-historical, revising the very history it alludes to, and it is politically conscious, providing commentary on past and present U.S. imperial processes and policies. I fulfill this reconceptualization by examining selected novels of Cormac McCarthy, Louise Erdrich, James Welch, and Larry McMurtry through a lens of postcolonial theory and revisionist western American history. In doing so, this study reveals that these authors undermine, critique, and condemn imperialist systems. An imperialist system is one in which cultural forms---visual art, literature, etc.---man be understood as operating to further political agendas. Thus, the texts analyzed in this dissertation not only criticize the motives and actions of American imperialism, but also condemn historical and literary narratives that have constituted a rhetoric of the mythic American West.; My principal arguments include the following: First, each author invokes the myth of the West in order to critique the genre of the Western. These critiques take the form of either parody or revisionist history. Since the Western celebrates the American expansionist era and the white male---settler, cowboy, or gunslinger---as the hero of this era, each author presents a version of history in which the white male is not the all-conquering hero. Thus, each revises the sanctioned version of American expansionist history. Furthermore, each author either directly or indirectly posits the Western as operating to further the agendas of American imperialism at home and/or abroad. |
