The transience of experimentation in Jack Kerouac's on the road

Abstract

The general object of study of this work is the rise and effects of competing visions in the construction of the subjective personal American landscape in 20th century North American travel literature. The research and analysis done will follow the idea that there are different visions of America present at the same time in a given text-character. These visions, when affecting and transforming the travelling experience and, when contrasted to other’s visions and compared between them, may allow for the appropriation of the landscape through the creation of a personal, intimate and polyphonic image of the same. In order to grasp this final vision characters must undergo a process with three stages that resemble an empiric scientific experiment. Is on the exploration of this experimental dimension from where we start this study.