Grid Space, Myth, and the American ‘Frontier’: The U.S. Census 1850-1900, and Frederick Jackson Turner’s Rhetorical Cartography of the West.

Keywords: Turner, U.S. Census, rhetorical cartography, literary geography, deformance
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 18

Abstract

In 'Mythologies' (1957) Roland Barthes observed that “Every myth can have its history and its geography; each is in fact the sign of the other.” This paper will outline cartographical and statistical representations of the ‘frontier’ (as line, in addition to statistical, nullified, urban-manufacturing space) in U.S. Census publications by J.D.B DeBow, Francis A. Walker and Henry Gannett between 1850 and 1900 to contextualize Fredrick Jackson Turner’s conceptualization of the frontier in his 1893 American Historical Association essay 'The Significance of the Frontier in American History.' The paper will discuss correlations of locations, ecologies, dates, historical figures, and events cited by Turner with locations, settings and themes in ‘frontier’ literature composed by authors such as Samuel Sewall, Hector de Crèvecour, Anne Eliza Bleeker, George Simms, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and others between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The paper will also showcase a "deformance" map of Turner’s 1893 essay. It will conclude with a brief appraisal of relations between the creation of geographical and historical myths, concepts of the frontier, and their relations to contemporary and past events shaping American experiences of landscape, identity, and sense of place.