SOURCE: “Themes for a Wilderness Epic,” in Acts of Discovery: Visions of America in the Lewis and Clark Journals, University of Illinois Press, 1993, pp. 192-207.

In the following essay, Furtwangler examines the Lewis and Clark journals in terms of a literary epic, focusing on such themes as pluralism, heroism, exploration, and the act of writing itself.

The term epic has often been used to describe the Lewis and Clark expedition. In its loose, modern usage, the word is an adjective that means grand, colossal, larger than life; it has been beaten to death in advertising blurbs for novels, films, and television spectacles. But as a noun, epic still has some meaning left as the name for a particular kind of story. An epic tells of extraordinary deeds—wars, travels, and feasts on a scale far beyond our own, even direct encounters with gods and monsters. The heroes of...