Mark Twain's Traveler and the

2009

An analysis of Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad with its emphasis on cultural representations in the American culture, touches very significantly upon the question of the rising of the American identity and its connection with the American Travel Narrative in the nineteenth century. While it is believed that the novel produces "pure" "true knowledge", or "a neutral exercise" of basic facts and realties, we argue that Twain's narrative entails a genre of political knowledge that is premised on the basic requirement of self/other constructions. The ideological apparatus of Americanized emerging identity, nationalism, power and authority are fundamental issues in the Twains narrative. Furthermore, it is not only the personal motif that is the basis of Twain's The Innocents Abroad, as he claims in his preface, nor is it a "Great Pleasure Excursion," as he pretends. The novel structures relations according to the rising American norms and values in the nineteenth century clearly acquired and absorbed by the American travelers in The Innocents Abroad. It also subscribes to the complication of the American character in order to develop, process and reconstruct cultural relations in the narrative. In this sense, we argue that Twain's narrative raises discursive ideological questions about the rising of the American national identity and its connection with other cultural components, the Oriental, in particular.

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2017

Indians have reportedly been traveling to Europe since the seventeenth century and narrativizing their travel accounts at least since the mid-eighteenth century. However, 'travelogue', what we know by European standards, as a genre in the Indian context is intrinsically linked with colonial exposure, the literary 'modernity' that purportedly ushered thereafter, and the high noon of Indian nationalism. Citing late nineteenth and early twentieth century 'Indian' travelogues, this paper examines the stakes in the Indian travelers emulating the eighteenth century Grand Tourist, and demonstrates how the literary articulation of tourism therein is symptomatic of an elitist-exclusionary mindset that strived to showcase cultural proximity with the colonizer on the one hand, while distantiating the colonially un(der)exposed 'natives' on the other hand.

2001

Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative, 2019

This is the story of my transatlantic life experience as an American pursuing a PhD in the UK for five years in dialogue with some British travellers that have comprised my scholarly inquiry for over ten years. Some travellers include: Morris Birkbeck, who left England for Illinois in 1817 seeking agricultural opportunities; he published his travelogue in 1818 inviting others to join him. William Cobbett, a well-known social reformer and outspoken critic of Birkbeck, Published his travelogue in 1818. William Faux responded to Birkbeck’s call; he criticized America for the practice of slavery, but enjoyed the plantation comforts slavery afforded. Frances Wright wanted to “fix” America’s slavery problem but otherwise saw the nation as a utopia; she travelled as a 20-something single woman and published her glowing report in 1821, returning in 1824 to implement a slavery-solution. Frances Trollope, vitriolic critic of American manners, ended up frustrated in Cincinnati after following Frances Wright and not getting what she bargained for. These travellers responded in print to each other, or knew each other personally. The chapter will offer research alongside reflections on travel, identity, nation, and privilege. As a storyteller and performer, this essay is based on a performative-dialogue delivered at the inter-disciplinary.net Storytelling conference of 2016 where my twenty-first century traveller-self spoke before an audience with a cast of traveller-characters.

2007

This study explores the growth of bourgeois American society during the midnineteenth century. Phenomena such as colonialism, migration, international trade, industrialization, and print culture cut across geographic and political boundaries and were critical to the evolution of bourgeoisie. Complimenting these conditions were traditions of cosmological mythology and enlightenment ideals that produced a transnationalist, if not cosmopolitan, consciousness. Together these contributed to an acute awareness of mobility and spatial difference. Metaphors of travel captured the sense of personal transformation, possibility, and empowerment common within the cultures of bourgeois identity. The romance of travel and encounter became a powerful discursive and psychological devise for the construction and reproduction of bourgeois desires such as status, class cohesion, and social dominance in the fluid, socially ambiguous conditions of the day. This study traces the significance of the romance of travel through a socially and geographically diverse gallery of individuals. It also examines the popular culture and institutions in which they participated. However, the narrative concentrates on the life of Bayard Taylor, a famed traveler, lecturer and writer of the day. Taylor serves as a representative figure. The journey of his rise to prominence, and the central role that a vi

Historia (Santiago), 2007

The aesthetic category of "picturesque" was incorporated in the conceptual repertoire of artists and art theorists during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Its content has always had an unstable character. Initially, its meaning alluded to a particular way of seeing and seizing nature, followings classic artists' composition canons. Later, it was used in a more comprehensive sense as a form of perception and recording of reality in different fields. This article studies the different connotations that "picturesque" had for travelers that followed the tradition of Alexander von Humboldt. By examining the work of J. M. Rugendas, it is possible to observe that aesthetic categories played an essential role in linking art work and scientific exploration projects in the American continent during the nineteenth century.

2012

The article analyzes the literary representations of Native Americans in Euro-American travelogues of the Antebellum era, as manifested in Washington Irving's A Tour on the Prairies (1835) and Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1843), focusing on how these two authors both utilized and transcended the then popular modes of narration on American Indians. It is argued that, despite the limitations imposed by their respective agendas (Irving's desire to come up with genuinely American mythos, equivalent to that of his European contemporaries; Fuller's involvement in women's rights), these two narratives may be seen as rare examples of works whose authors represented the American West and its native inhabitants without entirely succumbing to the aesthetic conventions and prevalent ideologies of the period.

The Historian, 2006