English Language and Literature ETDs

Publication Date

7-1-1966

Abstract

The scope of this study is selective rather than comprehensive. The works discussed are probably the more significant and typical examples of the theme of flight, or escape, in the modern American novel. Many more works might have been included which reveal this particular motif, but the result would have been repetitious rather than revealing, massive rather than searching, broad rather than deep, in the nature of a survey rather than a probe. To compensate partially for any works neglected, omitted, or unconsciously slighted, I have included a two-part appendix. This appendix is divided into American novels of the pre-Twain (or at least pre-Huckleberry Finn) period and the novels of the post-Twain period, all of which in one way or another—some only slightly—touch upon an escape of some sort. The second part of the list is, for obvious reasons, much the more comprehensive and longer, since it covers the modern post-Twain novel of escape. This appendix does not claim to be entirely comprehensive or exhaustive (far from it!); and the reader may well be capable of adding to it. But the list itself, to paraphrase a great American writer, is “but the sampling of a sampling.”

Degree Name

English

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

English

First Committee Member (Chair)

Hamlin Lewis Hill Jr.

Second Committee Member

Morris Freedman

Third Committee Member

Stanley Stewart Newman

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Share

COinS