Travel Writing and Re-Enactment

It explores the popular subgenre of travel narratives that re-enact historically prominent journeys. These re-enactments are quests for aura meant to capture a sense of historical profundity. However, they are also precarious and contingent, and force travellers to navigate historical change in densely performative ways.

Travel Writing and Re-Enactment: Echotourism explores the popular subgenre of travel narratives that re-enact historically prominent journeys. Drawing on philosopher Walter Benjamin, this monograph reads such re-enactments as quests for aura in which travellers seek to capture a sense of distinction and historical profundity. Travel Writing and Re-Enactment frames the re-enactment of past journeys in a number of contexts, including Benjamin's writing on mechanical reproduction, Judith Butler's work on gender performance, and postmodern parody. Echotourist journeys are surprisingly contingent and precarious, and force travellers to navigate historical changes involving empire, gender, and travel practice in densely performative ways. Through close readings of contemporary travel narratives, this monograph considers the legacies of Lord Byron, Charles Darwin, Graham Greene, Mary Kingsley, and Ernest Shackleton, among others. Travel Writing and Re-Enactment examines the way literary re-enactment expresses, and sometimes confounds, the desire to find meaning through travel in the contemporary world.

Autorentext

Lucas Tromly is an associate professor in the Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media at the University of Manitoba. He has published in the fields of modernism, comics studies, and Asian North American literature.

Klappentext

Travel Writing and Re-Enactment: Echotourism explores the popular subgenre of travel narratives that re-enact historically prominent journeys. Drawing on philosopher Walter Benjamin, this monograph reads such re-enactments as quests for aura in which travellers seek to capture a sense of distinction and historical profundity. Travel Writing and Re-Enactment frames the re-enactment of past journeys in a number of contexts, including Benjamin's writing on mechanical reproduction, Judith Butler's work on gender performance, and postmodern parody. Echotourist journeys are surprisingly contingent and precarious, and force travellers to navigate historical changes involving empire, gender, and travel practice in densely performative ways. Through close readings of contemporary travel narratives, this monograph considers the legacies of Lord Byron, Charles Darwin, Graham Greene, Mary Kingsley, and Ernest Shackleton, among others. Travel Writing and Re-Enactment examines the way literary re-enactment expresses, and sometimes confounds, the desire to find meaning through travel in the contemporary world.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One: Belated Explorers

Chapter Two: Echotourists and Anti-Tourism

Chapter Three: Echotourism and Masculinity

Chapter Four: Echotourism and Women Writers

Chapter Five: Echotourism and Postmodernism

Conclusion: Echotourism and Middlebrow Culture

Bibliography

Index