The Promise of Space in Mark Twain's Traveling Narratives

This project investigates Mark Twain's use of wilderness and natural space in his texts of travel, including the <italic>Diaries of Adam and Eve</italic>, <italic>Roughing It</italic>, <italic>Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</italic>, and <italic>Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians</italic>, 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.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Willis, Anna Elizabeth

• Adam and Eve

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/33484

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/33484