Travel Narrative and the Ends of Modernity - Hardcover

Burton, Stacy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107039312 ISBN 13: 9781107039315

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Over the past century, narratives of travel changed in response to modernist and postmodernist literary innovation, world wars, the demise of European empires, and the effect of new technologies and media on travel experience. Yet existing critical studies have not examined fully how the genre changes or theorized why. This study investigates the evolution of Anglophone travel narrative from the 1920s to the present, addressing the work of canonical authors such as T. E. Lawrence, W. H. Auden, and Rebecca West; best-sellers by Peter Fleming and H. V. Morton; and texts by Colin Thubron, Andrew X. Pham, Rosemary Mahoney, and others. It argues that the genre's most important transformation lies in its reinvention as a means of narrating the subjective experience of violence, cultural upheaval, and decline. It will interest scholars and students of travel writing, modernism and postmodernism, English and American literature, and the history and sociology of travel.

About this title

Book Description:

This text traces the evolution of travel narratives through the twentieth century. It examines classics such as Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, experimental texts such as Auden's collaborative Letters from Iceland, best-sellers such as Fleming's Brazilian Adventure, and late-century work by Thubron, Iyer, Mahoney, Pham, and others.

About the Author:

Stacy Burton is an associate professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her work on modernist fiction, travel narrative and literary theory has appeared in Modern Language Quarterly, Modern Philology, Comparative Literature, Genre, and elsewhere.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1107039312
• ISBN 13: 9781107039315
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264