Postcolonial Travel Writing

With its inclusion of original essays challenging the view of travel writing as a Eurocentric genre, this book will stand as a benchmark study of future inquiries in the field. It will revitalize the critical debate, sparking a much needed rethinking of a vibrant and highly popular but also volatile genre that has seen many changes in recent years.

This Companion addresses an exciting emerging field of literary scholarship that charts the intersections of postcolonial studies and travel writing.

Travel writing has become central to postcolonial studies. This book provides an introduction to the genre, particularly to its dynamics of power and representation, and the degree to which it has promoted ideologies of empire.The book combines detailed evaluations of major contemporary models of analysis - new historicism, travelling theory, and post-colonial studies - with a series of specific studies detailing the complicity of the genre with a history of violent incursion from Columbus' reports from the New World through to the nomadism of postmodern travelogue.Among its particular areas of concern are* 'Othering' discourses - of cannibalism and infanticide* the production of colonial knowledge - geographic,medicinal, zoological* the role of sexual anxiety in the constructionof the gendered, travelling body* the interplay between imperial and domestic spheres* reappropration of alien discourse by indigenous cultures.Post-colonial studies has concentrated on travellers as conduits of erasure and appropriation. This book resists the temptation to think in terms of a simple monolithic Eurocentrism and offers a more complex reading of texts produced before, during and after periods of imperial ascendency. In doing so, it provides a more nuanced account of the hegemonic functions of travel-writing. As such it is necessary reading for students and academics of cultural studies, literary theory, anthropology and history.

Travel writing has gained new appeal for the general reader and for the student of Literary and Cultural Studies. This volume provides a concise introduction to the basic characteristics and historical development of travel writing as it has emerged in the British Isles from the Middle Ages to the present day. Examples considered include many classics, but also a range of lesser-known representatives. The final chapter on travelogues produced in former British colonies was newly written for this English version.

An increasingly popular genre – addressing issues of empire, colonialism, post-colonialism, globalization, gender and politics – travel writing offers the reader a movement between the familiar and the unknown. In this volume, Carl Thompson: introduces the genre, outlining competing definitions and key debates provides a broad historical survey from the medieval period to the present day explores the autobiographical dimensions of the form looks at both men and women’s travel writing, surveying a range of canonical and more marginal works, drawn from both the colonial and postcolonial era utilises both British and American travelogues to consider the genre's role in shaping the history of both nations. Concise and practical, Travel Writing is the ideal introduction for those new to the subject, as well as a crucial overview of current debates in the field.

This collection of essays is an important contribution to travel writing studies -- looking beyond the explicitly political questions of postcolonial and gender discourses, it considers the form, poetics, institutions and reception of travel writing in the history of empire and its aftermath. Starting from the premise that travel writing studies has received much of its impetus and theoretical input from the sometimes overgeneralized precepts of postcolonial studies and gender studies, this collection aims to explore more widely and more locally the expression of imperialist discourse in travel writing, and also to locate within contemporary travel writing attempts to evade or re-engage with the power politics of such discourse. There is a double focus then to explore further postcolonial theory in European travel writing (Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanic), and to trace the emergence of postcolonial forms of travel writing. The thread that draws the two halves of the collection together is an interest in form and relations between form and travel.

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 and moves on to a detailed discussion of the qualities of travel writing and its related forms. It 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.

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 14/20, University Hassan II. Casablanca, course: The History and Theory of Travel, language: English, abstract: Travel writing has been, is, and probably will remain, demonized by postcolonial critics. This ‘genre’ has very quickly been linked to what Edward Said named Colonial Discourse, mainly for what many believe to be an intertwined relationship with colonialism. Travel writing’s main ‘contribution’ is to have diffused sermons of difference and by difference; inferiority, which was then used a rhetorical apology by the west to conquer and colonize. David Spurr in his book The Rhetoric of Empire argues in the same direction. He suggests that travel writings constituted “a source of information” to future-colonial administrators about the situations in their future colonies; that by describing and gazing upon they already started having a sense of ownership vis-à-vis these spaces. Douglas Ivison starts his article entitled “Travel Writing at the End of Empire...” by arguing in the same direction, he says that “[t]he practice of travel writing, and that of reading travel books, was inextricably intertwined with the creation and maintenance of European imperialism. Travel and its by-product travel writing were both enabled by and essential to, both cause and effect of, the project of imperial expansionism.” (2003: 1) It is thus very clear that there is a definite yet very complex interconnection between imperialism and travel writing.