Offerings on the Altar of national pride: Pioneer plays and American identity

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhile historical and sociological studies of American religion and politics frequently reference the role of fiction and poetry in creating national political and religious ideologies, the significance of dramatic representations to cultural mythology remains a generally neglected area. This article explores the discursive shifts in the intersection of religion, politics and national identity that are revealed in nineteenth-century American frontier plays. It addresses how dramatic writers make use of myths about national identity inherited from a range of social discourses to generate significant new stories about America and the national self. Thus, dramatic interpretations of Americans' institutionalized and lived experience harbour political agency, with the power to reshape the common understanding of the American subject. Further, staged representations of the American self illustrate the performative nature of national identity, for how the national personality is performed in social life bears similarities both to its discursive construction and to its display in theatrical spaces.