Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Sunshine State's Golden Fruit: Florida And The Orange, 1930-1960, Scott D. Hussey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Neither indigenous nor exclusive to Florida, the orange has nevertheless become an international symbol for the state. This connection between product and place appears in cultural materials regarding Florida. In fact and fiction the orange has operated as metaphor and synecdoche for an Edenic Florida. This thesis analyzes how the orange came to represent a "natural" Florida through the conflation of the commercial product with the state's history by way of political and marketing puffery. A litany of citrus advertisements, tourist ephemera, and historical associations regarding the state acknowledged and expanded the connections between the orange, improved health, and Florida. …