A walk on the wild side: walking and backpacking in late 20th century American travel writing

Abstract

Retracing its history from the origins to the contemporary age, this thesis explores the evolution of walking and analyzes its transformation into backpacking and hiking in the context of global tourism, with a specific focus on contemporary North America. This thesis also considers walking, backpacking and hiking as practices deeply connected with XX century travel narratives. This will be carried out, first, by providing an overview of the scholarly studies on the subject, and then by analyzing some of representative travel narratives which show the reciprocal inspiration and contamination of walking and writing in contemporary North America.