Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1978

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Coyle, William

Abstract

Three of Richard Brautigan's novels extensively employ the American pastoral motif in a predominantly romance form. All contrast the urban American present with a simpler, idealized pastoral setting. Working within each book is the "return to nature" mystique or impulse, treated comically or ironically. In A Confederate General from Big Sur, the "return to nature" impulse is comically linked to an extended metaphor of the Civil War. The combination denigrates the pastoral time away, creating a comic burlesque. In watermelon Sugar "returns to nature" in a fantasy, postindustrial Eden. Far from depicting the successful attainment of the yearned-for simplicity in a second Eden, Brautigan critically and ironically renders the perfect pastoral paradise. In Trout Fishing in America, the narrator searches for the pastoral ideal in urban America. A viable pastoral retreat is attained through the power of the imagination that reconciles contemporary industrialized America to its pastoral past.

Extent

90 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1978.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT13916

Format

pdf

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