Revisions of the American Adam

The figure of the American Adam is a prevalent mythin US cultural history. Defined by R.W.B. Lewis in 1955 as "the hero of newadventure . . .an individual standing alone, self-reliant and self-propelling,ready to confront whatever awaited him with the aid of his own unique andinherent resources", the figure is discernable in the American renaissancewriters and in the imagery of the frontiersman, cowboy, gangster as well as inthe heroes of US action movies. Focusing on the American Adam as a paradigm of masculine identity formation,this monograph examines how this fantasy of an imaginary ideal identity has held an ideological sway over US identityin the main. Taking in a range of cultural texts, Jonathan Mitchell's study exploresthe complexities and contradictions of Adam's 'real' condition of existence to showhow the paradigm influences both masculinity and subsequently hegemonic USidentity as represented throughout twentieth-century US culture.