『버지니언』과『오, 파이오니어!』로 살펴본 프런티어 신화와 이민자

The Frontier Myth and Immigrants in The Virginian and O Pioneers!

The United States of America has completed its present territory by pioneering ‘the Frontier’ mainly with the immigrants labor. It was and is the country of immigrants from various countries and their offsprings. But there always were conflicts between the early-settlers and the late-comers: if survived, they became mainstream Americans; if lost, they were downgraded to criminals, outlaws, minorities, and deported to the frontier. This paper examines the meanings of the frontier theory of Frederick Turner in his The Frontier in American History, and its effects on the literary representations of Owen Wister's The Virginian and Willa Cather's O Pioneers! . With these it could be revealed that how the frontier was constructed and mystified, and what the dynamics of the Frontier Myth is. Finally, by reexamining the roles of immigrants who have been oppressed in Turner's frontier theory and fictions of Wister and Cather, we could conceive the reality of the self-image of America as the country of immigrants.