1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996201148803316

Titolo

The Cambridge companion to American travel writing / / edited by Alfred Bendixen and Judith Hamera [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2009

ISBN

1-139-80137-6

1-139-00231-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (ix, 301 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Collana

Cambridge companions to literature

Disciplina

810.9/355

Soggetti

Travelers' writings, American - History and criticism

American prose literature - History and criticism

Travel writing - History

Americans - Foreign countries - Historiography

Travel in literature

National characteristics in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 09 Nov 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-288) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : New worlds and old lands : the travel book and the construction of American identity / Judith Hamera and Alfred Bendixen -- Beginnings : the origins of American travel writing in the pre-revolutionary period / Philip Gould -- "Property in the horizon" : landscape and American travel writing / William W. Stowe -- New York to Niagara by way of the Hudson and the Erie / Christopher Mulvey -- The Mississippi river as site and symbol / Thomas Ruys Smith -- The Southwest and travel writing / Martin Padget -- American travel books about Europe before the Civil War / Alfred Bendixen -- Americans in Europe : Henry James to the present / William Merrill Decker -- Americans in the Holy Land, Israel, and Palestine / Hilton Obenzinger -- Americans in the larger world : beyond the Pacific coast / Christopher McBride -- South of the border : American travel writing in Latin America / Terry Caesar -- African American travel literature / Virginia Whatley Smith -- American women and travel writing / Susan L. Roberson -- Driving that highway to consciousness : late twentieth-century American travel literature / Deborah Paes de Barros.



Sommario/riassunto

Travel writing has always been intimately linked with the construction of American identity. Occupying the space between fact and fiction, it exposes cultural fault lines and reveals the changing desires and anxieties of both the traveller and the reading public. These specially-commissioned essays trace the journeys taken by writers from the pre-revolutionary period right up to the present. They examine a wide range of responses to the problems posed by landscapes found both at home and abroad, from the Mississippi and the Southwest to Europe and the Holy Land. Throughout, the contributors focus on the role played by travel writing in the definition and formulation of national identity, and consider the experiences of minority writers as well as canonical authors. This Companion forms an invaluable guide for students approaching this new, important and exciting subject for the first time.