Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
31168359
Author
Wall, Karen L.(Karen Linda),1955-
Title
The panoramic journey : North Atlantic steamship travel at the fin de siecle.
Degree
M.A. -- Simon Fraser University, 1992
Publisher
Ottawa : National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1993.
Description
2 microfiches.
Notes
University Microfilms order no. UMI00439159.
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
This thesis concerns the production of the ocean journey at the fin de siecle juncture of modernity, capitalism and industrialization. The steamship as a key component of the North Atlantic mediascape interacted with new modes of communication to produce a certain passenger experience. This is traced through contemporary travel literature and journalism, drawing for interpretation on critical theories of industrial society and informed by both structuralism and historical materialism. How did the steam-powered acceleration of travel affect the Atlantic crossing between Britain and North America, as it was transposed and constructed in its representations? Central issues are: the subjective alteration in dimension and distance through accelerated travel; the visual and spatial biases associated with the media forms which served to both represent and steer a dynamic "world in transit"; and the way in which the decontextualization of markets, people and information inflected the incorporation of the passenger into the industrial environment. With the increased scope of mechanical reproduction in communication and in transportation, the nineteenth-century journey became "panoramic": like a painted panorama it refracted correspondences between geographic, social and representational space. Expectations of technology mingled with expectations of economic and social order; the values of industrial progress underwriting the steamship journey were challenged in the shipwreck of the Titanic in 1912.
ISBN
0315837721
9780315837720