Peter Freese (ed.). The ‘Journey of Life’ in American Life and Literature. American Studies – A Monograph Series 260. Heidelberg: Winter, 2015, 259 pp., € 32.00. Reviewed by Anita Wohlmann, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz E˗ Mail: wohlmann@uni-mainz.de DOI 10.1515/anglia-2016-0084 The ‘journey of life’ is both a prominent metaphor and a narrative that has been used expansively in the Western world since antiquity. In Peter Freese’s edited collection, the ‘journey of life’ serves as a metaphor which allows us to look back at Freese’s own academic career (Foreword) and his continuing investigations on the journey theme, which Freese pursued since Die Initiationsreise, published in 1971. For Freese, the ‘journey of life’ is as an epistemological tool for the study of American literature and culture: “the perennially recurring journey narrative is a major archetype of the human imagination” and, when used by storytellers, “a means of making temporal developments more immediately experienceable by spatializing them” (9). Since the United States is a country of refugees, immi- grants and pioneers who pushed the frontier westward, Freese finds “the concept of ‘the journey of life’” particularly fitting for critical research on American national identity, culture and literature. On the occasion of Peter Freese’s 75th Anglia 2016; 134(4): 734–738 Brought to you by | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Universitätsbibliothek (LMU) Authenticated Download Date | 11/24/19 10:29 AM