Journeys from Scandinavia: Travelogues of Africa, Asia, and South America, 1840―2000 - Softcover

Oxfeldt, Elisabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816656355 ISBN 13: 9780816656356

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2010

Synopsis

For all of the scholarship done on postcolonial literatures, little has been applied to Scandinavian writing. Yet, beginning with the onset of tourism beyond Scandinavia in the 1840s, a compelling body of prose works documents Scandinavian attitudes toward foreign countries and further shows how these Scandinavian travelers sought to portray themselves to uncharted cultures. Focusing on Danish and Norwegian travelogues, Elisabeth Oxfeldt traces the evolution of Scandinavian travel writing over two centuries using pivotal texts from each era, including works by Hans Christian Andersen, Knut Hamsun, and Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen). Oxfeldt situates each one in its historical and geopolitical context, and her close readings delineate how each travelogue reflects Scandinavia’s ongoing confrontation between Self and the non-European cultural Other. A long-overdue examination of travel literature produced by some of Denmark and Norway’s greatest writers, Journeys from Scandinavia unpacks the unstable constructions of Scandinavian cultural and national identity and, in doing so, complicates the common assumption of a homogeneous, hegemonic Scandinavia.

About this title

About the Author

Elisabeth Oxfeldt is associate professor at the University of Oslo and the author of Nordic Orientalism.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0816656355
• ISBN 13: 9780816656356
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 328