The fabricating American: Shaping a national identity through folk ideas in literature

This is a folklore in literature study that incorporates ideas from the fields of Folkoristics, American Studies, and Literature to examine American literature for evidence of units of American worldview called folk ideas. The five folk ideas that are addressed in each chapter are: "America as a Land of Opportunity"; "All Men are Created Equal"; "God-Blessed Nation"; "American Innocence"; and "The Wild West." These folk ideas and their variations are traditional building blocks used by American writers to fashion national identity.; This study is arranged differently than other analyses of literature. Instead of examining one or more texts written by a single author for a central thesis, I am looking at five ideas found in multiple texts with each chapter exploring at least nine pieces of literature focusing on a single folk idea.; As Americans, we hold beliefs about our place and ourselves within our culture and within the world, but our conflicting images of ourselves illustrate we have neither a comprehensive nor cohesive view. The way in which Americans perceive themselves is defined as their worldview; according to Clifford Geertz, this term is used in conjunction with the moral and aesthetic concept of "ethos" to try to give full understanding of the human experience; worldview is defined as a people's a concept of how things are in sheer actuality. However, the concept of worldview is too large and amorphous to handle in a single study; therefore, it is beneficial to break worldview into smaller units called folk ideas.; This folkloric study of folk ideas differs from traditional American Studies (AS) examinations of myth and symbols in literature. First, folklorists and AS scholars have separate terminology: folklorists use folk idea as a term for units of worldview; AS scholars use the term myth to describe similar ideas. Second, AS scholars examine texts to find the myths that contribute to Americans' identity. This study acknowledges that we have an inherent understanding of our national identity; therefore the exploration of texts for folk ideas will yield a better understanding of our national literature.