A study of Rølvaag's idealism

Abstract

The place of Ole Edvart Rølvaag among the great realists in American fiction has been generally acknowledged as dependent upon his best known novel, Giants in the Earth, and its sequels, Peder Victorious and Their Fathers' God. Giants in the Earth has been called "the best of all immigrant novels in the United States," "the most penetrating and mature depictment of the westward movement in our literature," and Rølvaag, "perhaps the greatest interpreter of immigrant life that this country has known. Relatively few of his readers, however, are aware of the heroic idealism that was the compelling power for Rølvaag's work.