The Connecticut Yankee in the twentieth century : travel to the past in science fiction
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The Connecticut Yankee in the twentieth century : travel to the past in science fiction
(Contributions to the study of science fiction and fantasy, no. 43)
Greenwood Press, 1991
Available at 12 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [183]-194) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The first examples of travel to the past appear early in the nineteenth century, but it was not until the publication of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court that we see a hero taking advantage of a combination of hindsight and advances in technology to build an empire in the past. Given that this scenario is such a common twentieth-century fantasy, its late appearance is somewhat surprising. As fewer and fewer writers find travel to the future an appealing scenario, travel to the past and to paratime--alternative universes--have come increasingly to the forefront. Twain's Connecticut Yankee contains, explicitly or implicitly, most of the problems and themes which later writers have wrung out of past time-travel. Concentrating on travel to the past, this study details, both in Twain's seminal work and in its science fiction successors, the various roles played by the traveller to the past--nostalgic, tourist, imperialist, Oedipal hero, and existential isolate--and attempts to relate these roles both to the rest of Twain's work and to the world-view of contemporary America.
While other writers have dealt with time travel as part of a general survey of science fiction, Foote's study is among the first to relate it to the body of Mark Twain's work and to attempt to account for the appeal of time travel to the past in historical, geographical, and psychological terms. Because it straddles several disciplines, it will appeal to those interested in science fiction, American literature, and popular culture.
Table of Contents
Preface
Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Time Travel: Definitions, Problems, Rules, Limits
Children of the Yankee: The Nostalgics
Children of the Yankee: The Innocents Abroad
Children of the Yankee: Cecil Rhodes and Company
Children of the Yankee: Dear Old Dad and His Girl
Children of the Yankee: These Curious Strangers
Stepchildren of the Yankee
Of Time and the River
Bibliography
Index
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