A Pilgrimage Through History - Mark Twain’s experience of sites of the past as described in The Innocents Abroad
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2025-07-10
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en
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Recent years have seen significant academic interest in the embodied experiences of tourists. However, such tourist experiences have hardly been the subject of study in a historical context. This study aims to contribute to the limited body of literature on this topic. This thesis examines how Mark Twain experienced sites of the past as recorded in his travel book The Innocents Abroad. Drawing from both tourism studies and embodiment theory, this study explores how Twain’s views on Romanticism, history, and his own Protestant American identity shaped his encounters with sites of the past. Through a close analysis of The Innocents Abroad, this paper characterises Twain as someone who is critically aware of the literary tropes of his time, yet also appreciates the mythical stories embedded in the places he visits. Furthermore, this study investigates how Twain’s embodied experiences range from awe to fatigue and how these interacted with his expectations and preconceptions as a tourist. Ultimately, by analysing Twain’s embodied, cognitive, and cultural encounters with sites of the past, this thesis demonstrates how his experiences were shaped by the interplay between personal identity, historical imagination, and the realities of nineteenth-century tourism.
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