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Heaven's fertile soil: baseball, gender, and the natural American heartland in W.P. Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa"

This thesis explores W.P. Kinsella's emphasis on love for land, family, and baseball in discussing relationships between characters in his short story "Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa". Chapter I introduces the characters, their role in establishing this as a tale of conservation through agrarianism, and how Kinsella's choice to write a positive story creates unique potential for healing. Chapter II establishes similarities between the father's war experiences and Jackson's exile from baseball, underscoring its mythic importance. Chapter III examines the relationship between the protagonist and his wife, and how their relationship symbolically fosters love for nature through farming, and can be used to reconcile modern agrarianism with ecocriticism. Chapter IV discusses how connection with the earth brings healing. The final chapter underscores the worthiness of this work to be a cherished part of the American literary canon. / by Ashley Santy. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:fau.edu/oai:fau.digital.flvc.org:fau_3965
ContributorsSanty, Ashley., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
PublisherFlorida Atlantic University
Source SetsFlorida Atlantic University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, Electronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formativ, 63 p., electronic
Rightshttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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