Frontier Legacies: The Search for Home in the Twentieth Century

"This dissertation investigates several paradigmatic relationships between the concepts ""home"" and ""the frontier."" It focuses on four writers of the twentieth century from divergent cultural and literary contexts. Each writer depicts the psychic paradox of feeling homeless in one's home. The writers include: Giuseppe Ungaretti, an Italian modernist poet who was born in Egypt and did not visit Italy until his twenties; Aminata Sow Fall, a contemporary Senegalese novelist; Louise Erdrich, a contemporary writer of Native American and European heritage; and James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon), a science fiction writer believed to be a man for the first eight years of her publishing career. Specific conceptual frontiers are read as crucial to understanding the scope of each writer's work, as they determine the boundaries within which ""home"" can be envisioned. The thesis focuses on three abstract frontiers: the African colonial frontier, the frontier of the American West, and science fiction's ""final frontier."" It argues that twentieth century literary articulations of home respond to various discursive imperatives delimited by nineteenth century thought and expansion. Home is read as a fleeting phenomenon rather than a stable location."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Comparative Literature

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Carollo, Kevin Anthony

Contributors dc:contributor

• Blake, Nancy

• Literature, Romance

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9952982

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/87313