The 20th Century American Road Narrative as a Literary Genre

FAIN: FT-53753-05

Ann Brigham
Roosevelt University (Chicago, IL 60605-1315)

In this book-length study, I analyze representations of mobility in twentieth-century automobile road narratives by examining sets of fictional, filmic, and/or non-fictional texts in relation to specific cultural contexts, discourses, and geographies. Viewed as everything from an extension of frontier ideology to the expression of counter culture, this literary genre can be defined by its repeated engagement with the uniquely American mythology of mobility. In defining the specific and changing textual meanings of mobility, I add a new perspective to road narrative scholarship, one that interrogates the terms of analysis and connects the genre to cultural and social history.

Associated Products

American Road Narratives: Reimagining Mobility in Literature and Film (Book)
Title: American Road Narratives: Reimagining Mobility in Literature and Film
Author: Ann Brigham
Abstract: The promise of mobility--the freedom to go anywhere and become anyone--has profoundly shaped the American national psyche. Transforming our sense of identity and place, American mobility is perhaps nowhere more vividly captured than in the image of the open road. Too often the celebratory idea of the road as a free-floating form of expansiveness and opportunity dominates the critical discussion. Rather than thinking of mobility as an escape from cultural tensions, however, this book proposes that we understand mobility as a mode of engagement with them. From the earliest transcontinental automobile narratives from the 1910s, through classics like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and the film Thelma & Louise, up to post-9/11 narratives, Brigham explores the genre of road narratives to show how mobility both thrives on and attempts to manage shifting conflicts about space and society in the United States. This book offers an invigoratingly different view of mobility and a new understanding of the road narrative’s importance in American culture.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://books.upress.virginia.edu/detail%2Fbooks%2Fgroup-4869.xml
Primary URL Description: This is the description on the University of Virginia Press website.
Secondary URL: http://http://www.worldcat.org/title/american-road-narratives-reimagining-mobility-in-literature-and-film/oclc/893452422&referer=brief_results
Access Model: Available in paper, cloth, and ebook
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780813937502
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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