Textanalysis and History

Session Seven

Travel Writing

Agenda

• Fiction and non-fiction

• Travel writing – key terms

• Group work on Stevenson

• Discussion

Fiction, non-fiction, and the literary mind

• Fictional and non-fictional contracts: Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography and ”William J. Clinton”

• The literary mind

Travel and Travel Writing

• Why travel?

• Why write or make tv programmes about travel?

• Why read about travel?

• Why watch travel programmes

• http://palinstravels.co.uk/index.php

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818)

Anon. The Lonely Wanderer (Photo) www.travelblog.org/Photos/1816850.html

J.M.W. Turner, Tintern Abbey (1794)

Dr. Syntax

Romantic and Victorian travel

• Tourists, travellers, and art– Ruins– Landscapes

• The beautiful: Culture, art: pleasure

• The picturesque: mediation between the beautiful and the sublime

• The sublime: Nature: awe, horror, fear

Travel writing: the key aspects according to Fussel

• Fiction– Comic novel– Romance

• Quest• Pastoral• Picaresque

– Allegory

• Non-fiction:– Essay– Memoir– Autobiography

Elements of non-fiction in travel writing

• Essay: moral purpose

• Memoir: encounters with great men / important events

• Autobiography

Elements of fiction in travel writing

• Comic novel– Comic anomalies: normal vs weird

Elements of fiction in travel writing

• Romance– Quest: tripartite structure (home-away-home)

Elements of fiction in travel writing

• Romance– Pastoral:

• Contrasts between an observer and the observed:

Rich – complex – sophisticated - city – morally inferior

Poor – simple - country – morally superior

– Pastoral elegy• Lament of loss, change, or death

Elements of fiction in travel writing

• Romance– Quest: tripartite structure (home-away-home)– Pastoral (elegy):

• Contrasts between an observer and the observed:

Rich – complex – sophisticated - city – morally inferior

Poor – simple - country – morally superior

– Picaresque: Real vs ideal. Deflation

Elements of fiction in travel writing

• Allegory– Travelling = reading and writing– Traveller = reader or writer– Unknown = the text

Travel writing and allegory

• Allegory: primary and secondary orders of signification

• Travelling = living and dying (life is a journey)

• Travelling = reading and writing (what is suggested about the activities of reading and writing?)

Travel writing as ”displaced” romance

• ”All this is to suggest that the modern travel book is what Northrop Frye would call a myth that has been ’displaced’ – that is, lowered brought down to earth, rendered credible ’scientifically’ […]” (Fussell 1980: 208)

Intertextuality

• Stevenson’s dedication

• Intertextuality and allegory

• John Bunyan, The Pilgrims Progress (1678)

R. L. Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne

• Thematic hypotheses

Group work: R. L. Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne

• Outline the uses of fictional elements:– Comic novel (Does

Stevenson use comic anomalies? How and Why?)

– Romance (how and why are the romance elements used?)

• Quest• Pastoral• Picaresque

– Allegory (Of reading? Of writing? Of life?)

• Outline the uses of non-fictional elements– Essay (is Stevenson

making a moral point?)

– Memoir: Do we learn something about famous people and places?

– Autobiography: Do we learn something about Stevenson’s life