Ce volume - le premier publié par le Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Nord-Américaines et Canadiennes de l'Université de Lille III - comprend une série d'articles sur un aspect difficile à cerner mais pourtant capital de la civilisation américaine contemporaine: le travail du mythe et de l'idéologie dans ses diverses manifestations exhaustives - que serait d'ailleurs une analyse "exhaustive" de l'idéologie? Mais il tente d'effectuer une saisie de cette question en examinant un très large éventail de textes. Dans la première partie sont interrogés successivement les poèmes de Erza Pound, Theodore Roethke, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser; les romans de Henry James et ceux de Dashiell Hammet; la production picturale des Hyperréalistes. Dans la deuxième partie, les études s'organisent autour de la problèmatique des minorités dans la société américaine et plus particulièrement de la minorité noire. On y trouve des études sur Booker T. Washington, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, la musique noire et le problème des quotas. Cet ensemble, varié par les domaines abordés mais très cohérent par la perspective qu'il adopte, apporte une contribution substantielle à une branche des études américaines en plein développement.

What are the religious impulses in the 1976 film Rocky, and how can they work to shape one's social identity? Do the films Alien and Aliens signify the reemergence of the earth goddess as a vital cultural power? What female archetypes, borne out of male desire, inform the experience of women in Nine and a Half Weeks?These are among the several compelling questions the authors of this volume consider as they explore the way popular American film relates to religion. Oddly, religion and film?two pervasive elements of American culture?have seldom been studied in connection with each other. In this first systematic exploration, the authors look beyond surface religious themes and imagery in film, discovering a deeper, implicit presence of religion. They employ theological, mythological, and social and political criticism to analyze the influence of religion, in all its rich variety and diversity, on popular film. Perhaps more importantly, they consider how the medium of film has helped influence and shape American religious culture, secular or otherwise.More than a random collection of essays, this volume brings to the study of religion and film a carefully constructed analytic framework that advances our understanding of both. Screening the Sacred provides fresh and welcome insight to film criticism; it also holds far-reaching relevance for the study of religion. Progressive in its approach, instructive in its analyses, this book is written for students, scholars, and other readers interested in religion, popular film, and the impact of each on American culture.

Arguing against the presumption that the U.S. has no dominant ideology, the author confronts the myths in American society that limit the perception of political reality and constrain progressive reform.

From the introduction: "Tradition has it that every American child receives, as part of his birthright, the freedom to mold his own life. . . . However inaccurate as a description of American society, the success myth reflects what millions believe that society is or ought to be. The degree to which opportunity has or has not been available in our society is a subject for empirical investigation. It rests within the realm of verifiable fact. The belief that opportunity exists for all is a subject for intellectual analysis and rests within the realm of ideology. This latter dimension of the success myth is the primary focus of this book."

The spell that the West has always exercised on the American people had its most intense impact on American literature and thought during the nineteenth century. Smith shows, with vast comprehension, the influence of the nineteenth-century West in all its variety and strength, in special relation to social, economic, cultural, and political forces. He traces the myths and symbols of the Westward movement such as the general notion of a Westward-moving Course of Empire, the Wild Western hero, the virtuous yeoman-farmer--in such varied nineteenth-century writings as Leaves of Grass, the great corpus of Dime Novels, and most notably, Frederick Jackson Turner's The Frontier in American History. Moreover, he synthesizesthe imaginative expression of Westernmyths and symbols in literature withtheir role in contemporary politics,economics, and society, embodiedin such forms as the idea of ManifestDestiny, the conflict in the Americanmind between idealizations of primitivism on the one hand and of progressand civilization on the other, theHomestead Act of 1862, and public-land policy after the Civil War. The myths of the American Westthat found their expression in nineteenth-century words and deeds remaina part of every American's heritage,and Smith, with his insightinto their power and significance,makes possible a critical appreciation of that heritage.

"This new edition of MYTHOLOGIES is the first complete, authoritative English version of the French classic, Roland Barthes's most emblematic work"--

In Theorizing Myth, Bruce Lincoln traces the way scholars and others have used the category of "myth" to fetishize or deride certain kinds of stories, usually those told by others. He begins by showing that mythos yielded to logos not as part of a (mythic) "Greek miracle," but as part of struggles over political, linguistic, and epistemological authority occasioned by expanded use of writing and the practice of Athenian democracy. Lincoln then turns his attention to the period when myth was recuperated as a privileged type of narrative, a process he locates in the political and cultural ferment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here, he connects renewed enthusiasm for myth to the nexus of Romanticism, nationalism, and Aryan triumphalism, particularly the quest for a language and set of stories on which nation-states could be founded. In the final section of this wide-ranging book, Lincoln advocates a fresh approach to the study of myth, providing varied case studies to support his view of myth—and scholarship on myth—as ideology in narrative form.

This Very Short Introduction explores different approaches to myth from several disciplines, including science, religion, philosophy, literature, and psychology. In this new edition, Robert Segal considers both the future study of myth as well as the impact of areas such as cognitive science and the latest approaches to narrative theory.

Myth and Ideology develops a general theory of myth by reviewing esoteric and exoteric myths from many parts of the world from ancient times to the late twentieth century, highlighting the major approaches to the study of myth and ideology.

"The book explores how border subjects have been created and disputed in cultural narratives of the Texas-Mexico border, comparing and analyzing Mexican, Mexican American, and Anglo literary representations of the border"--Provided by publisher.