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The American Notion of Freedom: Freedom as a Central Element of American History and its Reflection in Literature.
Tomášková, Barbora ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
This thesis explores the American notion of freedom and its interpretations within individual periods of American history. In the thesis, freedom is described upon the basis of historical context, and its importance is demonstrated through specific examples of the periods' literary works and documents. The work analyzes periods from 1776; the year of the U.S. establishment, and continues up to the first half of the twentieth century. For the purpose of the thesis, six particular periods characteristic of significant historical events, or, of social, literary, and philosophical movements, were chosen. Chronologically, the thesis begins with the 17th century's arrival of the first European settlers to the North American continent, followed by the founding of the United States more than a century later. The thesis then gradually focuses on movements and philosophies emerging during the 18th and 19th century, namely, transcendentalism and abolitionism, and further continues with introducing the freedom-related ideals of American anarchists and pragmatists. The work then closes with the 20th century's Beat generation. The objective of the thesis is to prove, that during American history, freedom had always been the most important value; a value which shaped the American mentality into how we know it...
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