Main Street and Empire: The Fictional Small Town in the Age of Globalization (The American Literatures Initiative)

"The small town has become a national icon that circulates widely in literature, culture, and politics as an authentic American space and community. Yet there are surprisingly few critical studies that analyze the small town's centrality to the United States' identity and imagination. In Main Street and Empire, Ryan Poll addresses this need, arguing that the small town, as evoked by the image of "Main Street," is not a relic of the past but rather a metaphorical screen upon which America's "everyday" stories and subjects are projected on both a national and global scale. Bringing together a broad selection of texts--from Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Grace Metalious's Peyton Place, and Peter Weir's The Truman Show to the speeches of William McKinley, Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama--Poll examines how the small town is used to imagine and reproduce the nation throughout the twentieth- and into the twenty-first century. He contends that the dominant small town, despite its innocent, nostalgic appearance, is central to the development of the U.S. empire and global capitalism." --Publisher description Introduction: the small town as a modern nation form Sacred islands in modernity: the prehistory of the dominant small town An unfinished revolution: "the revolt from the village" reconsidered Mapping the modern small town: a circular imaginary A new machine in the small-town garden: periodizing an automodernity The formation of a U.S. fascist aesthetics; or, welcome to main street Staging and archiving the nation: pedagogical theater, Thornton Wilder's Our town, and U.S. imperialism "One happy world": the postmodern small town and the small-town postmodern Global belonging: the small town as the world's home Afterword: the global village. In "Main Street and Empire," Ryan Poll argues that the small town, as evoked by the image of OC Main Street, OCO is not a relic of the past but rather a metaphorical screen upon which the nationOCOs OC everydayOCO stories and subjects are projected on both a national and global level. It brings together a wide range of literary, cultural, and political texts to examine how the small town is used to imagine and reproduce the nation throughout the twentieth- and into the twenty-first century. " Argues that the small town, as evoked by the image of ""Main Street"", is not a relic of the past but rather a metaphorical screen upon which the US's ""everyday"" stories and subjects are projected on both a national and global level. It brings together a wide range of literary, cultural, and political texts to examine how the small town is used to imagine and reproduce the nation.