Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Ranging from the early modern to the postcolonial, and dealing mainly with encounters in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East, Perspectives on Travel Writing is a collection of new essays by international scholars that examines some of the various contexts of travel writing, as well as its generic characteristics. Contributions examine the similarities between autobiography and memoir, fiction, and travel writing, and attempt to define travel writing as a genre. Utilising a variety of approaches, the essays display a shared concern with what travel writing does and how it does it. The effects of encounter and border-crossing on gender, 'race', and national identity are considered throughout.The collection begins with a review of some of the problems and issues facing the scholar of travel writing, moves on to a detailed discussion of the qualities of travel writing and its related forms, and then presents in chronological order a number of case studies, before closing with a critical discussion of approaches to the subject. An essay collection with broad historical and geographical coverage, this volume should appeal to students and researchers of travel and travel-related literatures from across the Humanities.
Contents: Introduction, Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs
Defining travel: on the travel book, travel writing, and terminology, Jan Borm
'As Mannerly and Civill as any of Europe': early modern travel writing and the exploration of the English self, Helga Quadflieg
'Not absolutely a native, nor entirely a stranger': the Journeys of Anne Grant, Betty Hagglund
The Saxon in Ireland: John Hervey Ashworth on the emigrant trail, Glenn Hooper
Animals as figures of otherness in Victorian narratives of travel in Brittany, 1840-95, Jean-Yves Le Disez
'The Silent Language of the Face': the perception of indigenous difference in travel writing about the Caribbean, Peter Hulme
Night train to Belo Horizonte: South American travels, Erdmute Wenzel White
Between gender and genre: the travels of Estella Canziani, Loredana Polezzi
Varieties of nostalgia in contemporary travel writing, Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan
Medieval travel in postcolonial times: Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land, Padmini Mongia
Where are we going? Cross-border approaches to travel writing, Tim Youngs
Select Bibliography
Index.
Author Biography: About the Editors: Glenn Hooper, Department of English, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland Tim Youngs, Professor of English and Travel Studies, Nottingham Trent University, UK.
Synopsis
A dozen essays by scholars of literature from Europe and North America explore European travel writing to cast light on how Europeans constructed themselves, and constructed everyone else in the world as not them. Among the topics are the boundaries of the genre itself, early modern travel writing and the exploration of the English self, John Hervey Ashworth as a Saxon in Ireland, animals as figures of Otherness in travel narratives of Brittany, South America, the Caribbean, the travels of Estella Canziani between gender and genre, and Amitav Ghosh's medieval travel in postcolonial times. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR