A CONTEMPORARY REVIEW ON SENSE OF PLACE AND BORDER IN NINETEENTH CENTURY NARRATIVES OF AMERICAN EXPANSIONISM

Since its discovery, the New World has had a lasting impact on Western mind. While the geographical explorations of fifteenth century were progressing as an outcome of economic and political competition in Western Europe, transatlantic voyages transformed the feudal darkness of the Middle Ages and the concept of borderline. Beginning with the thirteen colonies in the Eastern sea board of North America, the Anglo Saxon dominance started its course of expansionism with the foundation of the United States of America. In this era, frontiersmen’s diaries, pamphlets, works of literature, political articles and various other cultural products of folk and high art were highlighting American patriotism, which gained momentum within Westward expansion. This study aims to review the sense of place and border in nineteenth century narratives of American expansionism and trace back the historical imprints of today’s American notion of frontier with reference to John O’Sullivan’s essay “The Great Nation of Futurity” (1839), Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis “Significance of the Frontier” (1893), Washington Irving’s travel writing, A Tour on the Prairies (1835), Walt Whitman’s poem “A Passage to India” (1871); autobiography of William Apes, A Son of the Forest (1829), the paintings of Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (1861) and Albert Bierstadt’s Valley of Yosemite (1865).