The Presentation of Modernity by Trains in Twentieth-Century American Literature

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-97-8_184How to use a DOI?

Keywords

American literature; railway; modernity

Abstract

The train, a new mechanized means of mobility in the 19th century, contributed greatly to the development of modernity. In addition, train imagery permeates American literature from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. They show a range of features of modernization in the physical sense, but also expose the contradictions that modern American society possesses — the hope of freedom and progress, and the reality of competition and oppression. By analyzing the train’s connotations in literature, modernization shall be reflected as a double-edged sword.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yiyao Sun
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/02/13
TI  - The Presentation of Modernity by Trains in Twentieth-Century American Literature
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 4th International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development (ICLAHD 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1434
EP  - 1443
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-97-8_184
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-97-8_184
ID  - Sun2023
ER  -