The prominence of frontier thematics in the trilogy, as well as the appearance of historical models other than the Roman Empire, have gone largely unnoticed because of Asimov's own explanations of using Gibbon's History (1) as a model (In Memory 311). Because the trilogy portrays large swaths of future history through archetypal hero figures, my focus, too, will be on some of the main characters. By following the development of the trilogy, and by drawing parallels to American ideological and political history, J will show how the novels are shaped by frontier thematics and the idea of manifest destiny.
In this paper I contend that while the fall of the Roman Empire is the initial model, aspects of American expansionism come to dominate the narrative as soon as there is a need for something to replace the falling order. Because of this the trilogy is often read as re-enacting the fall of the Roman Empire on a galactic scale. Writing the Foundation trilogy, Asimov based the idea of a declining empire on Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789).
0 kommentar(er)
