On the River Road. In viaggio sui fiumi dell'Ovest, 1803-1861.

From the Louisiana Purchase (1803) to the beginning of the Civil War (1861), travel writing about journeys on the Mississippi and its tributaries contributed to spread themes, motives, symbols and characters of paramount importance for American imagination. Traveling was already a key part in American identity and the Western Rivers represented a landscape element endowed with great mythopoetic power. The present thesis analyses actual and fictional accounts of journeys on the Western Rivers in order to establish fruitful links between major works of American literature and less known texts, drawing especially from the memoirs of travelers and the sketches of Southwestern humorists.