Item Details

title

The Promise of Space in Mark Twain's Traveling Narratives

author

Willis, Anna Elizabeth

abstract

This project investigates Mark Twain's use of wilderness and natural space in his texts of travel, including the Diaries of Adam and Eve, Roughing It, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians, through the general lens of spatial theory. Its primary focus is the way in which Twain challenges and employs layers of extant spatial meaning upon American soil, and suggests that his attention to natural space in these texts indicates a sense of America's potential for social change and progress. Tracing his appropriation and manipulation of mythical Edenic and wilderness spaces, it finds that, rather than attempting to extirpate American geographical imaginaries, Twain sought the promise of progress within them. Even as his texts challenge and unsettle spatial meanings for wilderness and the Western frontier, they demonstrate how those layers of meaning can be altered to promote America's ideals in the midst of its reality.

subject

Adam and Eve

Cultural Geography

Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

Spatial theory

The West

contributor

Bowie, Rian E (committee chair)

Maine, Barry (committee member)

Wilson, Eric (committee member)

date

2011-07-14T20:36:12Z (accessioned)

2013-07-14T08:30:11Z (available)

2011 (issued)

degree

English (discipline)

embargo

2013-07-14 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/33484 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis