Travel Narrative and the Ends of Modernity

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.

Author: Stacy Burton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 07/09/2015
Pages: 266
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.87lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781107539754

About the Author
Burton, Stacy: - 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.