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Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Cities and towns in literature; Main Street (Lewis, Sinclair); Our town (Wilder, Thornton); Winesburg, Ohio (Anderson, Sherwood); Anderson, Sherwood, --1876-1941--Winesburg, Ohio; Hedges, Peter--What's eating Gilbert Grape?; Lewis, Sinclair, --1885-1951--Main Street; Russo, Richard, --1949---Empire falls; Wilder, Thornton, --1897-1975--Our town; Keillor, Garrison--Lake Wobegon days; Academic theses;

Abstract

The subject of small towns has both attracted and made some of the greatest authors in American literature. Through stunning imagery, description, and dialogue they create realistic portrayals of this places that lay them bare for all to see. Generous treatments portray them as generally good places that uphold the myth of small towns as utopian villages. For those with more unfavorable views, however, the literature shows the dullness of the town as well as the provinciality and closed-mindedness of its people. It is unfair to categorize some of the better works into either/or arguments however, for they involve more comprehensive approaches to the subject that show the good and the bad and how people come to view and expect what they do from small towns. These approaches seem most prevalent in 20th century American literature. In this context, the literature shows small towns beginning to decline after their peaks in the previous century. Industrialism had spread to these towns from big cities by this time, and they no longer found themselves to be quaint, ideal little villages. Carl Van Doren's article "The Revolt from the Village: 1920" argues that they never were the ideal places they were once thought. Instead, they are centers of dullness and mediocrity in America that influence the larger culture. He viewed the writers of the time as rejecting this way of life through a counter-presentation of the American small town. Such critical views are still widely held today. However, these works deserve more complex approaches to interpretation. This thesis is largely a response to Van Doren's ideas. It compares early 20th century American small town "revolt" literature to American small town literature from the end of the 20th century. Each chapter addresses two writers, one from the early part of the 20th century, and one from the latter. The texts studied in Chapter 1 include Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and Peter Hedges' What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Chapter 2 examines Lewis' Main Street and Russo's Empire Falls. The final section, Chapter 3, analyzes Thornton Wilder's Our Town and Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon Days.

Year of Submission

2006

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of English Language and Literature

First Advisor

James O'Loughlin

Second Advisor

Karen Tracey

Third Advisor

Grant Tracey

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

2006

Object Description

1 PDF file (96 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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