This thesis focuses on Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927), a Caribbean-born journalist, educator, and community organizer whose historical restoration requires us to expand the frame of Black radicalism in the twentieth century. Harrison was the first Black leader of the Socialist Party of America to articulate a historical materialist analysis of the "Negro question", to organise a Black-led Marxist formation, and to systematically and publicly challenge the party's racial prejudices. In a time of urbanization, migration, lynching, and segregation, he subsequently developed the World War I-era New Negro movement by spearheading its first organisation, newspaper, nation-wide congress, and political party. Harrison pioneered a new form of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, coloured internationalism. He also inaugurated the socio-cultural tradition of street corner speaking in Harlem, which formed the institutional basis for developing a wide-ranging, working-class, community-based, Black modernist intellectual culture. His people-centred and mass-movement-oriented model of leadership catalysed the rise to prominence of Marcus Garvey and the Garvey movement. Meanwhile, Harrison's African identity and epistemology positioned him to establish an African-centred street scholar tradition in Harlem that endures to this day. Despite Harrison's wide-ranging influence on a whole generation of Black leaders from W.E.B. Du Bois to A. Philip Randolph, his impact and legacy have been largely forgotten. As a result, unearthing and recovering Harrison requires us to rethink multiple histories - the white left, the New Negro movement, Garveyism, the "Harlem Renaissance" - which have marginalized him. Harrison figured centrally in all of these social movements, so restoring his angle of vision demonstrates previously invisible connections, conjunctures, and continuities between disparate and often segregated currents of intellectual and political history. It also broadens the spectrum of Black emancipatory possibilities by restoring an example that retains much of its relevance today.

Esta tese aborda o tema do impacto político e intelectual da Guerra do Vietnã nos Estados Unidos a partir da história da fundação e dos primeiros anos de existência do periódico Foreign Policy (1970-1977). A intervenção no Vietnã desencadeou uma intensa contestação na sociedade norte-americana em relação às doutrinas e práticas de Guerra Fria que, até então, eram amplamente aceitas. A crise foi tão profunda que as principais organizações de política externa, o sistema político, os consagrados membros do establishment e as bases ideacionais e intelectuais que sustentavam as práticas intervencionistas se tornaram todos alvos de profundos questionamentos e, muitas vezes, violentos ataques. A história da Foreign Policy reconstrói este processo a partir de um ponto de vista privilegiado, uma vez que foi esta crise que motivou a fundação de um novo periódico com a intenção de revisar a política externa norte-americana e reformular os paradigmas analíticos em relações internacionais. Além disso, diversos membros da Foreign Policy participaram de decisões da intervenção no Vietnã, quando ainda eram mais jovens, e assumiram ao longo da década de 1970 posição de destaque na elaboração de uma política externa menos intervencionista e militarista (o que desencadeia na participação deles no governo Carter) ou na constituição de novos paradigmas intelectuais em política internacional que transcendiam o tema da Guerra Fria, abordando a crescente interdependência e as novas questões sociais globais. Esta tese retoma desde a Guerra do Vietnã até as propostas de governo do presidente Carter e os novos paradigmas analíticos em relações internacionais a partir da trajetória de membros da Foreign Policy (Samuel Huntington, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Holbrooke, James C. Thomson, Joseph Nye, entre outros). A história deste periódico ajuda a compreender melhor uma conjuntura política decisiva nos Estados Unidos em que foram concebidos os germes da polarização política, da crise do establishment e de uma preocupação política com as consequências domésticas de uma economia cada vez mais interdependente e globalizada. / This dissertation focuses on the political and intellectual impact of the Vietnam War in the United States, based on the founding and first years of the existence of Foreign Policy Magazine (1970-1977). Intervention in Vietnam set off an intense dispute in American society regarding the Cold War doctrines and practices, which had been widely accepted until then. The crisis was so deep that the major foreign policy organizations, the political system, respected members of the establishment, and the ideological and intellectual bases that had sustained the interventionist practices all became targets of profound questioning and, frequently violent attacks. The history of Foreign Policy reconstructs this process based on a privileged vantage point, since it was this crisis that motivated the rise of a new periodical with the intention of reviewing American foreign policy and reformulating the analytical paradigms regarding international relations. Moreover, various members of Foreign Policy had taken part in the decisions to intervene in Vietnam, when they were younger, and during the 1970s assumed a position of importance in developing a less interventionist and militaristic foreign policy (which led to their participation in the Carter government), or in the creation of new intellectual paradigms in international politics that transcend the theme of the Cold War, focusing on increasing interdependence and the new global social issues. This dissertation reexamines the period from the Vietnam War to the Carter president proposals and the new analytical paradigms with respect to international relations based on the trajectory of the Foreign Policy associates (Samuel Huntington, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Holbrooke, James C. Thomson, Joseph Nye, and others). The history of this journal helps to better understand one decisive political juncture of the United States, wherein were conceived the seeds of political polarization, the crisis of the establishment, and of a political concern with the domestic consequences of an increasingly interdependent and globalized economy.

This thesis argues that much of the political historiography is mistaken in portraying the post-1960s United States as a nation moving inexorably to the right. It also argues that historians should not understand the Democratic Party as being in terminal decline between 1972 and 1984, marginalised by a coalescing conservative Republican majority. Indeed, taking as its focus the U.S. Congress, this thesis asks why the remarkable resilience of the congressional Democratic Party has been overlooked by historians. It further asks why that resilience did so little to help the party in subsequent years. The Democratic revival in the elections of 1974 and 1976, so often dismissed as a post-Watergate aberration, was in fact an authentic political opportunity that the party failed to exploit. Exploring various Democratic factions within Congress that competed to shape their party's public philosophy, this thesis seeks to show how grander liberal ambitions were often subordinated to the logic of legislative politics and policymaking. The underlying theme is the unsuitability of Congress as an arena for the discussion and refinement of post-Great Society liberalism. Again and again, the legislature displayed a remarkable facility for undermining iconoclasm and stalling policy experimentation. Institutional reforms in the early 1970s, supposed to reinvigorate the Congress and the congressional Democratic Party, actually succeeded only in intensifying the fragmentation of both. Congressional politics became more entrepreneurial and less party-oriented, leaving legislators with few incentives to look beyond their own political fortunes to the party's future prospects. Enduring Democratic strength in Congress meant that Capitol Hill remained at the centre of the party's efforts to reclaim its preeminent position in American politics. The fact that the Democrats never experienced a protracted period of minority status, as the Republicans did during much of the mid-twentieth century, left them ill-equipped and without a powerful incentive to think in broader terms about their party's mission.

Twentieth-century environmentalist discourse often laid the blame for environmental degradation on Western civilization, and presented the religious traditions of the East as offering an ecocentric antidote to Western dualism and anthropocentrism. Gary Snyder has looked to Chinese and Japanese Buddhism to inform his environmentalist poetry and prose. While Snyder often writes in terms of a dualism of East and West, he synthesizes traditional forms of Buddhism with various Western traditions, and his green Buddhism ultimately undermines more simplistic oppositions of East and West. The first chapter reads Snyder's writing of the mid-1950s alongside several of his West Coast contemporaries - Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen and Jack Kerouac - showing that these writers evoked the natural world together with Buddhist themes before the advent of the modern environmental movement in order to mount a critique of Cold War American culture. Snyder's early interest in Buddhism was motivated largely by translations of Chinese poetry and Chapter Two examines his own translations of the Tang Dynasty poet Hanshan. In Snyder's translations and contemporaneous original poetry, Buddhist poetics mingle with American conceptions of wilderness. Chapter Three shows how Snyder's Buddhism was influenced by Anglophone writers such as D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, and argues that from the late 1960s Snyder aimed to Americanize Buddhism as ideas of localism became more central to his environmentalism. Chapter Four examines Snyder's synthesis of Hua-yen Buddhism and Western scientific ecology in the 1970s and 1980s. Chapter Five examines 'The Hokkaido Book,' an unfinished prose work on environmental attitudes in the Far East in which Snyder considers the relationship between the civilized and the primitive. Chapter Six examines the influence of Chinese landscape painting and Japanese No drama, two forms steeped in Buddhist ideas, on the poems of 'Mountains' and 'Rivers Without End'.

Este trabalho apresenta uma análise da coleção de livros Little House, de Laura Ingalls Wilder, e está dividido em três capítulos. No Capítulo I, O Romanesco como base de sustentação da ideologia norte-americana, mostramos quais são as estratégias literárias utilizadas por Wilder para compor suas obras, de forma a transmitir e sustentar a ideologia norte-americana. Utilizamos como base comparativa os volumes Little Town on the Prairie e The First Four Years, e tentamos evidenciar as diferenças entre os volumes publicados em vida e o volume póstumo, no que concerne ao estilo e a visão de munome do aluno: Fabiana Valeria da ndo apresentadas. Para tanto, baseamo-nos em autores da teoria literária, como Northrop Frye (1957), Philip Stevick (1967), e Rosemary Jackson (1983), e em pesquisadores anteriores das obras de Wilder, como Ann Romines (1997) e Caroline Fazer (1994). No Capítulo II, O lugar da História em Farmer Boy, exploramos o livro em que Wilder descreve uma vida de fartura numa fazenda para discutirmos as diferenças entre o período narrado e o contexto histórico que gerou as condições de produção da coleção Little House. Assim, realizamos uma análise de excertos do livro que diziam respeito ao trabalho e ao dinheiro com a intenção de relacionar ambos os contextos, explicando que a época narrada dependeu do contexto sócio-econômico do qual surgiu para que transmitisse as lições de sobrevivência em tempos difíceis a leitores que se encontravam em meio à crise da Depressão. Neste capítulo, baseamo-nos em historiadores como Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1958). No Capítulo III, Desdobramentos ideológicos nas obras de Wilder, apresentamos uma discussão teórica acerca da ideologia e de como ela trabalha na formação, transmissão e reafirmação de seus valores. Para tanto, baseamo-nos em autores como Terry Eagleton (1997) e Raymond Williams (1977). Em seguida, retomamos o contexto histórico para discutirmos que a ideologia trabalha em três níveis: na constituição de Wilder como sujeito histórico, na produção dos Little House e no consumo, por parte dos leitores da década de 1930. Para explicar a dinâmica de relacionamento desses três níveis, baseamo-nos na leitura de Tempo Livre, de Theodor Adorno (1962). Finalmente, procuramos mostrar ao leitor, ao analisarmos trechos de Farmer Boy e Little Town on the Prairie, que em todo o tempo estivemos lidando com o inconsciente político apresentado por Fredric Jameson (1980), de forma a mostrar que, apesar de Wilder ter planejado e ter um método para transmitir a ideologia, a fim de reafirmar a identidade norte-americana, a crise que deu origem ao texto surge em vários momentos através de brechas que expõe sua crítica à economia e ao momento histórico da Depressão. / This dissertation presents an analysis of the Little House Books collection, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and it is divided into three chapters. In Chapter I, Romance as the sustaining basis of the North-American ideology, we show which are the literary strategies used by wilder to compose her books, in order to transmit and sustain the North-American ideology. We use, as a comparative basis, Little Town on the Prairie and The First Four Years, and we try to put in evidence the differences between the books published during her life and the posthumous work, concerning style and the change in her point of view. In doing so, we base ourselves on authors from the literary theory, such as Northrop Frye (1957), Philip Stevick (1967), and Rosemary Jackson (1983), and in previous reasearchers of Wilder\'s works, such as Ann Romines (1994) and Caroline Fraser (1994). In Chapter II, History\'s place in Farmer Boy, we explore the book in which Wilder describes a wealthy life in a farm, so we can discuss the differences between the narrated period and the historical context that generated the conditions that allowed the appearance of the Little House books. Afterwards, we present an analysis of some excerpts taken from Farmer Boy that are related to work and money, with the intention of establishing the interrelations between both contexts, and explaining that the narrated time depended on the social and economical context from which it has appeared, so to pass on the lesson about how to survive in such hard times to readers that experienced the crisis during the Depression years. In Chapter III, Ideology unfolded in the works by Wilder, we present a theoretical discussion concerning ideology and how it works on formation, transmission, and reafirmation of its own values. In doing so, we base ourselves on authors such as Terry Eagleton (1997) and Raymond Williams (1977). Then, we take the historical context again in order to explain that ideology work in three levels: in the constitution od Wilder as a historical person, in the production of the Little House books, and in its comsumption, made by the readers in the decade of 1930. In order to explain how these three levels relate among themselves, we base ourselves on the texto \"Leisure Time\", by Theodor Adorno (1962). Finally, in the moment we analyze some exceprts taken from Farmer Boy and Little Town on the Prairie,we try to show to the reader that all the time we deal with Fredric Jameson\'s political uncounscious (1980). Thus, in spite of trying to commit herself to her plan of transmission and reafirmation of the North-American ideology, her criticism about economy and politics of the thirties breaks the path of the way she had made, in order to figure althrough the books.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-10T17:55:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Lucas_Andre_Berno_Kolln.pdf: 2141701 bytes, checksum: 71d34556cfccf15d79182153dce2a398 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-16 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation discusses the books of John Steinbeck published in the thirties, willing to comprehend the way that the dialogue between the author's literature and his dialectic relation with the historical reality in which he wrote and lived. The analysis of Steinbeck's writings produced during the thirties made possible the discussion about the effects of the 1929 crisis and the empowerment of monopolist capitalism, processes that became very evident in this period. The conflicts present in that reality molded the historical reading of the writer and of the social group that he centrally portrayed throughout his literary production, the small farmers. Steinbeck's deep connection with the old middle classes conditioned his literature and his worldview, since the writer was raised into that way of life and educated into the typical values of that social group. This made his literature, during the thirties, unfold itself in many different ways in order to deal with the experience of the destruction of that way of life in all of its complexity. As the crisis deepened, Steinbeck faced different expressions of it, being the proletarianization of the small farmers and the destruction of the basis of their world some of the most bruising aspects that his literature intended to expose, portray and denounce. Sometimes assuming nostalgic outlines to celebrate the past, sometimes drawing on the satire to question the bourgeois ethos, sometimes rising through the denounce to reveal the scars created by the economic transformations, Steinbeck did not duck the problems placed by the development of the American capitalism. Based on this, his literature has became not only an interpretation of the reality created by the Great Depression through its mechanisms, dynamics and structures, but also the literary testimony of a person who observed the decadence of the way of life in which he grew up and of his peers. In this sense, the dissertation aimed to situate and comprehend Steinbeck's writings in their historical concreteness, that is, in the terms in which they were conceived and produced, in such a way that it became possible to observe several dimensions of the crisis and of Steinbeck's historical reading related to this experience, marked by loss, by misery and by the transformation of the small farmers into agricultural workers / Essa dissertação discute as obras da década de 30 de John Steinbeck procurando compreender de que maneira se deu o diálogo entre a literatura do autor e a relação dialética desse com a realidade história na qual viveu e escreveu. A análise dos escritos de Steinbeck produzidos nos anos 30 possibilitou a discussão sobre os desdobramentos e efeitos da crise de 1929 e do fortalecimento do capitalismo monopolista, processos esses que se tornaram muito evidentes nesse período. A conflituosidade presente naquela realidade moldou a leitura histórica do escritor e do grupo social que ele centralmente retratou ao longo de sua produção literária, os pequenos proprietários agrícolas. A profunda ligação de Steinbeck com as antigas classes médias rurais condicionou sua literatura e sua visão de mundo, uma vez que o escritor foi criado em meio àquele modo de vida e educado dentro dos valores típicos desse grupo social. Isso fez com que sua literatura, ao longo dos anos 30, se desdobrasse de diferentes formas para lidar com a experiência da destruição daquele modo de vida em toda a sua complexidade. Na medida em que a crise se aprofundava, Steinbeck travou contato com diferentes expressões dela, sendo a proletarização dos pequenos proprietários e a destruição das bases de seu mundo alguns dos aspectos mais contundentes que sua literatura procurou desvelar, retratar e denunciar. Ora assumindo contornos nostálgicos para celebrar o passado, ora valendo-se da sátira para questionar o ethos burguês, ora erguendo-se por meio da denúncia para trazer à lume as mazelas geradas pelas transformações econômicas, Steinbeck não se furtou aos problemas postos pelo desenvolvimento histórico do capitalismo estadunidense. A partir disso, sua literatura se tornou não só uma interpretação da realidade criada pela Grande Depressão a partir de seus mecanismos, suas dinâmicas e suas estruturas, mas também o testemunho literário de um sujeito que observou a decadência do modo de vida no qual cresceu e dos sujeitos que eram seus pares. Nesse sentido, a dissertação buscou situar e compreender os escritos de John Steinbeck em sua concretude histórica, isto é, nos termos em que eles foram concebidos e produzidos, ao passo que tornou-se possível observar várias dimensões da crise e da leitura histórica de Steinbeck em relação a essa experiência, marcada pela perda, pela miséria e pela transformação dos pequenos proprietários rurais em trabalhadores agrícolas

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La naissance de la photographie sociale aux États-Unis à la fin du XIXe siècle est contemporaine d'une place nouvelle accordée à l'enfant dans la structure familiale. Le contraste est grand entre l'enfant riche, sacralisé, à l'innocence louée dans les arts, et l'enfant pauvre, souvent exploité mais représenté de façon surtout pittoresque. Tout en mettant l'enfant pauvre au cœur de leurs préoccupations, les réformateurs font usage de la photographie dans une optique de progrès social et d'intervention où texte et image se révèlent indissociables, qu'il s'agisse de Jacob A. Riis, journaliste et photographe à New York à la fin du XIXe siècle et de l'engagement de Lewis W. Hine dans la lutte contre le travail des enfants avec le National Child Labor Committee, dans un contexte de forte immigration, d'industrialisation et d'urbanisation chaotique, ou des photographes de la Farm Security Administration à la fin des années 30 dans le cadre du New Deal. L'enfant est au centre d'une rhétorique qui s'appuie sur la dimension vivante et vraie de la photographie et sur son pouvoir émotionnel et il contribue à la définition d'un genre photographique : le documentaire social, dont le statut évolue sous l'effet de la diversification des modes de diffusion (presse, conférences, expositions, musée). / Social photography was born in the United States at the end of the 19th century at a time when children were beginning to occupy a new place in the family. There is a stark contrast between the rich children, who tend to be sanctified and whose innocence is praised through art, and the poor children, who are often exploited and depicted in a picturesque way. While putting poor children at the heart of their concerns, the reformers used photography as a means to promote social progress, in such a way that text and image prove to be indissociable. Such is the case with Jacob A. Riis, a journalist and photographer who worked in New York at the end of the 19th century, and Lewis W. Hine, through his commitment to the struggle against child labor with the National Child Labor Committee (at a time marked by high immigration, rapid industrialization, and chaotic urbanization), as well as the photographers who worked for the Farm Security Administration at the end of the 1930s within the New Deal. Children are at the heart of a rhetorical system that exploits the vivid and truthful dimensions of photography and its power to move us. They contribute to the emergence of a new genre of photography, social documentary photography, which evolved according to the various ways in which it was disseminated (the press, conferences, exhibitions, and museums). While the cause of children is most often defended and while they maintain their status as subjects in these photographs, the ways in which they are depicted through different means of communication and dissemination sometimes turn them into mere objects.

L’idée d’exceptionnalisme américain a fait l’objet d’une attention particulière depuis le début des années 1990. Souvent décriée, parfois louée mais généralement réifiée, elle est devenue un concept déterministe au service d’une lecture linéaire de l’histoire des États-Unis depuis l’indépendance. La nécessité de déconstruire cette invariance simplificatrice et d’étudier l’exceptionnalisme comme une production sociale évoluant dans le temps en fonction de son contexte national et international est à l’origine de ce travail. L’exception américaine ne peut, en effet, être pensée uniquement à partir du national tant elle répond à des représentations conjuguées de Soi et de l’Autre. À la charnière entre le national et l’international, la politique étrangère est donc un poste d’observation privilégié de la construction de ce trait identitaire américain. L’ambition de cette thèse est de confronter le concept d’exceptionnalisme aux sources afin de mieux comprendre ce qu’il signifie pour nos acteurs et de mesurer son impact sur la politique étrangère des États-Unis durant les années d’après Guerre froide. Face à l’évolution du système international, la puissance nordaméricaine redéfinit, en effet, son rôle et son engagement extérieur. Après un XXe siècle marqué par des affrontements idéologiques globaux, les États-Unis se posaient en champion d’un nouvel ordre international garant de l’universalisation des valeurs démocratiques et libérales. Profondément moral, ce positionnement justifiait alors l’engagement des États-Unis dans une nouvelle lutte entre la modernité et le fanatisme à la fin des années 1990 avant d’être discrédité par l’enlisement militaire en Afghanistan et en Irak. Le changement de paradigme de la seconde moitié des années 2000 minimisait alors l’impact de la représentation exceptionnelle du Soi américain sur la définition de la politique étrangère. / The idea of American exceptionalism has been the subject of many studies since the beginning of the 1990s. Usually criticized, sometimes praised but generally reified, it became a determinist concept creating a linear perspective of U.S. history since the Independence. Also, the necessity to question this simplistic invariance and to study exceptionalism as a social production evolving with its national and its international contexts is at the origin of this project. Also, this American exception cannot be considered only through a national prism since it mixes representations of the Self and the Other. Between domestic and global affairs, foreign policy, then, represents an excellent observation point of the construction of this American identity feature. The purpose of this dissertation is to question the concept of exceptionalism through the analyze of primary sources in order to have a better understanding of its meaning for the actors and to evaluate its impact on U.S. foreign policy during the post-Cold War years. Indeed, the North-American power had to redefine its international role and engagement whereas the international system knew a dramatic evolution. After a 20th century marked by global ideological conflicts, the United States championed a new world order standing for the universalization of liberal and democratic values. This deeply moral position, then, justified the U.S. engagement in a new fight between modernity and fanaticism at the end of the 1990s before its discredit in the wake of the military stalemates in Afghanistan and Iraq. The change of paradigm during the late 2000s also minimized the impact of the exceptional representation of the American Self on the making of U.S. foreign policy.

Il existe une abondance extraordinaire de récits de voyage et d'oeuvres de fiction en langue allemande focalisant l'outre-mer et en premier lieu les Etats-Unis d'Amérique. Ces textes écrits au cours du XIX et pendant la première moitié du XX siècle représentent un phénomène notable mais peu commenté qui se prête tout à fait à un traitement historique: ces écrits accompagnent, appuient, commentent et vilipendent la très forte émigration allemande vers les Amériques, notamment l'Amérique du Nord. Le présent travail s'attache à rendre compte du roman d'aventures outre-mer de langue allemande et ce faisant s'efforce de cerner ce qui fait la spécificité de la perspective allemande. Dans cette optique ont été retenues douze oeuvres composées par des auteurs germanophones aussi différents les uns des autres que les Allemands Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816-1872), Karl May (1842-1912), Ernst Friedrich Löhndorff (1899-1976), L'Austro-Américain Karl Postl alias Charles Sealsfield (1793-1864), l'Autrichien Franz Kafka (1883-1924), le Germano-Mexicain B. Traven (1882-1969). Après un chapitre d'exposition traitant de l'horizon d'attente présent dans l'Allemagne du XIX siècle, onze chapitres sont consacrés à l'étude des romans sélectionnés. L'analyse de ces oeuvres permet de mettre en évidence quelques caractéristiques saillantes qui sont propres au genre tant au niveau de l'esthétique , de la logique, des thématiques et des schémas idéologiques qu'au niveau de l'organisation en affrontements axiologiques entre un univers de la rationalité et de la civilisation et un monde considéré comme relevant de la "sauvagerie". Sont aussi analysées la silhouette de l'aventurier littéraire, les différentes approches de l'altérité entre refus et attrait, la tentation récurrente de la transgression, l'inscription du récit dans un système de codes et de stéréotypes préexistants. / There are many German travel stories as well as works of fiction focusing on overseas territories, in the first place on the United States of America. These texts that were written in the course of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth century represent a noteworthy phenomenon that has been little commented on and lends itself well to a historical approach. Indeed, these pieces of writing accompany, comment on and vilify the German mass migration to the American continent, especially to North America. The present work attempts to account for the German adventure novel the plot of which takes place overseas. In so doing it tries to define the specificity of the German perspective. Twelve novels have been selected that were written by several german-speaking authors very different from one another: the German Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816-1872), Karl May (1842-1912), Ernst Friedrich Löhndorff (1899-1976), the Austro-American Karl Postl aka Charles Sealsfield (1793-1864), The Austrian Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the Germano-Mexican B. Traven (1882-1969). Following an introductory chapter dealing with the horizon of aspirations in nineteenth-century Germany are eleven chapters each devoted to the study of one selected novel.The analysis of these works shows some striking features that belong to the genre either at the level of the aesthetics, logic, set of themes and ideological patterns or at the level of axiological confrontations between a rational, civilized world and the so-called "savageness". Other items in the study are the figure of the literary adventurer, the different approaches to the alterity phenomenon, the recurrent temptation of transgression, the insertion of the text in a pre-existent codes and stereotypes system.