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Title:
American road literature / editor, Ronald Primeau, Central Michigan University.
Author:
Primeau, Ronald, editor.
Publication Information:
Ipswich, Massachusetts : Salem Press, a division of EBSCO Publishing : Grey House Publishing, 2013.
Call Number:
PS169.T74 A54 2013
Abstract:
"An exploration of "cruising" America, Highways through the Heartland: American Road Literature examines the prominent themes and stories of the American road narrative. Beginning with the westward thrust of early America's seaboard colonies to the romanticized and philosophical road narratives of the Beat Generation, the American experience--its ideals, dreams, and subsequent disillusionments--has been quintessentially linked to the road. Whether grueling or carefree, spiritual or physical, these journeys upon the American highway have helped us to explore and define our diverse culture and establish the road narrative as an essential American genre. Edited by Ron Primeau, Professor of English at Central Michigan University, this volume in the Critical Insights series presents a variety of new essays on the genre. For readers who are studying it for the first time, four essays survey the critical conversation regarding the American road narrative, explore its cultural and historical contexts, and offer close and comparative readings of key texts in the genre. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of American road literature can then move on to other essays that explore it in depth through a variety of critical approaches. Works discussed include Theodore Dreiser's A Hoosier Holiday, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Sinclair Lewis' Free Air, and N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain, as well as the works of Mark Twain, Wright Morris, Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, and Theodore Roethke."--Publisher's website.
ISBN:
9781429838191
Series:
Critical insights

Critical insights.
Physical Description:
x, 347 pages : map ; 24 cm.
Contents:
On American road literature / Ronald Primeau -- Critical meeting places: major approaches to the American road-narrative genre / Ann Brigham -- Real, romantic, modern, and natural: midwestern hybridity and the Frank Booth illustrations in Theodore Dreiser's A Hoosier holiday / Marilyn Judith Atlas -- Baudrillard in the heartland: the construction of the midwest in American road literature / Barry Alford -- American odysseus: Mark Twain, travel, and the journey home / John Rohrkemper -- Paradoxes along the beat journey in Kerouac's On the road / Dominic Ording -- Sinclair Lewis's Free air and the "voyage into democracy" / Ann Brigham -- Means and ends of the road in the works of Wright Morris / Joseph J. Wydeven -- Cormac McCarthy's second literary trilogy: Dreams of the fire and Our fathers / Richmond Adams -- Girls gone wild: American women's road narratives and literary traditions / Deborah Paes de Barros -- The dark side of the road: American road narratives in the popular dark fantastic / David Bain -- Poetics of place in Roethke's "North American sequence" / Christian Knoeller -- "The cost of this distance": Robert Fanning's American prophet and the failure to communicate / Caroline Maun -- Journeying down freedom road: the Underground Railroad and the narrative of travel / Maureen N. Eke -- "Surprised to find itself in a tree in Chicago's suburbs": images of home and travel in the nonfiction of Mary Morris / Marybeth Pringle -- Shoreline sansaras / Arvid F. Sponberg -- Key to the highway: the road to the blues / Phil Patton -- Travel guidebooks, cultural narratives, and the American road quest / Steven K. Bailey -- A moving story: the recurrence of the Kiowa Tsoai legend in the work of N. Scott Momaday / Matthew Low.
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