Political Mythology and Popular Fiction

(Hardback)

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A fascinating contribution to the scholarship of both political science and literature, this book explores eight major genres of contemporary popular fiction generally assumed to be essentially devoid of political content--children's novels, Westerns, middle-class fiction, historical novels, small-town Americana, sports novels, American war fiction, and science fiction. By uncovering the often covert mythical themes and cultural symbols hidden in the plot formulas of these works--many of them bestsellers--the essays illustrate the debt of mass-market authors to cultural and political traditions that reach back to the origins of the American Republic.

Reviews

This collection of essays, organized around myth and its impact on genres of popular American fiction, was solicited from the political science community in order to explore how this popular fiction can serve 'as a focus of serious political interpretation.' Yanarella and Sigelman discuss myth as a common and unifying theme running throughout the collection, and place the study in the larger literary-political context of scholarship, which focuses on literary work of higher aesthetic standards. The impressive pioneering work of John Cawelti (Apostles of the Self-Made Man, CH Mar 66; The Six-Gun Mystique, 1971; Adventure, Mystery, Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture, CH Jul 76) served as a stimulus to the editors and various of the other eight contributors to this volume. The political readings cover the relationship of American popular fiction to the law-and-order myth of the frontier and the childhood myth concerning political and community organization. This book contains a wealth of information, is well-documented with a useful selected bibliography of myth, popular fiction, and politics, and should be of value to readers ranging from community college students through faculty.-Choice
"This collection of essays, organized around myth and its impact on genres of popular American fiction, was solicited from the political science community in order to explore how this popular fiction can serve 'as a focus of serious political interpretation.' Yanarella and Sigelman discuss myth as a common and unifying theme running throughout the collection, and place the study in the larger literary-political context of scholarship, which focuses on literary work of higher aesthetic standards. The impressive pioneering work of John Cawelti (Apostles of the Self-Made Man, CH Mar 66; The Six-Gun Mystique, 1971; Adventure, Mystery, Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture, CH Jul 76) served as a stimulus to the editors and various of the other eight contributors to this volume. The political readings cover the relationship of American popular fiction to the law-and-order myth of the frontier and the childhood myth concerning political and community organization. This book contains a wealth of information, is well-documented with a useful selected bibliography of myth, popular fiction, and politics, and should be of value to readers ranging from community college students through faculty."-Choice

Author Bio

ERNEST J. YANARELLA is Professor of Political Science at the University of Kentucky. LEE SIGELMAN is Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona.