Kinship, Affiliation and Adoption in Nineteenth Century American Literature

Abstract

In the article I consider the status of various forms of affiliation and adoption narratives and practices  as depicted in early American texts, in order to survey a cultural landscape where different possibilities were still viable, prior to the end of the nineteenth century, when we get to the discouraging alternative Huck Finn faces in Mark Twain's novel: either conform to sentimental topoi of domestic assimilation, or live a rough life on the frontier.