Julia Kuehn - Böcker

This collection of essays is an important contribution to travel writing studies -- looking beyond the explicitly political questions of postcolonial and gender discourses, it considers the form, poetics, institutions and reception of travel writing in the history of empire and its aftermath. Starting from the premise that travel writing studies has received much of its impetus and theoretical input from the sometimes overgeneralized precepts of postcolonial studies and gender studies, this collection aims to explore more widely and more locally the expression of imperialist discourse in travel writing, and also to locate within contemporary travel writing attempts to evade or re-engage with the power politics of such discourse. There is a double focus then to explore further postcolonial theory in European travel writing (Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanic), and to trace the emergence of postcolonial forms of travel writing. The thread that draws the two halves of the collection together is an interest in form and relations between form and travel.

Many well-known male writers produced fictions about colonial spaces and discussed the advantages of realism over romance, and vice versa, in the ‘art of fiction’ debate of the 1880s; but how did female writers contribute to colonial fiction?This volume links fictional, non-fictional and pictorial representations of a colonial otherness with the late nineteenth-century artistic concerns about representational conventions and possibilities. The author explores these texts and images through the postcolonial framework of ‘exoticism’, arguing that the epistemological dilemma of a ‘self’ encountering an ‘other’ results in the interrelated predicament to find poetic modalities – mimetic, realistic and documentary on the one hand; romantic, fantastic and picturesque on the other – that befit an ‘exotic’ representation. Thus women writers did not only participate in the making of colonial fictions but also in the late nineteenth-century artistic debate about the nature of fiction.This book maps the epistemological concerns of exoticism and of difference – self and other, home and away, familiarity and strangeness – onto the representational modes of realism and romance. The author focuses exclusively on female novelists, travel writers and painters of the turn-of-the-century exotic, and especially on neglected authors of academically under-researched genres such as the bestselling novel and the travelogue.

This collection of essays is an important contribution to travel writing studies -- looking beyond the explicitly political questions of postcolonial and gender discourses, it considers the form, poetics, institutions and reception of travel writing in the history of empire and its aftermath. Starting from the premise that travel writing studies has received much of its impetus and theoretical input from the sometimes overgeneralized precepts of postcolonial studies and gender studies, this collection aims to explore more widely and more locally the expression of imperialist discourse in travel writing, and also to locate within contemporary travel writing attempts to evade or re-engage with the power politics of such discourse. There is a double focus then to explore further postcolonial theory in European travel writing (Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanic), and to trace the emergence of postcolonial forms of travel writing. The thread that draws the two halves of the collection together is an interest in form and relations between form and travel.

As China rose to its position of global superpower, Chinese groups in the West watched with anticipation and trepidation. For members of China's diasporic community, the rise of China created ripples of change, influencing communities, culture, and communication, and even challenging the very concept of diaspora. Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China examines how artists, writers, filmmakers, and intellectuals from the Chinese diaspora responded to China's ascendancy by representing it to global audiences with a new-found vitality and self-assurance. The chapters, often personal in nature, cover locations as varied as Australia, North America, and Tibet. And yet, the focus of each is the nexus between the political and economic rise of China and the cultural products this period produced, a place where new ideas of nation, identity, and diaspora were forged.

As China rose to its position of global superpower, Chinese groups in the West watched with anticipation and trepidation. For members of China's diasporic community, the rise of China created ripples of change, influencing communities, culture, and communication, and even challenging the very concept of diaspora. Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China examines how artists, writers, filmmakers, and intellectuals from the Chinese diaspora responded to China's ascendancy by representing it to global audiences with a new-found vitality and self-assurance. The chapters, often personal in nature, cover locations as varied as Australia, North America, and Tibet. And yet, the focus of each is the nexus between the political and economic rise of China and the cultural products this period produced, a place where new ideas of nation, identity, and diaspora were forged.

This collection focuses attention on theoretical approaches to travel writing, with the aim to advance the discourse. Internationally renowned, as well as emerging, scholars establish a critical milieu for travel writing studies, as well as offer a set of exemplars in the application of theory to travel writing.

Many well-known male writers produced fictions about colonial spaces and discussed the advantages of realism over romance, and vice versa, in the ‘art of fiction’ debate of the 1880s; but how did female writers contribute to colonial fiction?This volume links fictional, non-fictional and pictorial representations of a colonial otherness with the late nineteenth-century artistic concerns about representational conventions and possibilities. The author explores these texts and images through the postcolonial framework of ‘exoticism’, arguing that the epistemological dilemma of a ‘self’ encountering an ‘other’ results in the interrelated predicament to find poetic modalities – mimetic, realistic and documentary on the one hand; romantic, fantastic and picturesque on the other – that befit an ‘exotic’ representation. Thus women writers did not only participate in the making of colonial fictions but also in the late nineteenth-century artistic debate about the nature of fiction.This book maps the epistemological concerns of exoticism and of difference – self and other, home and away, familiarity and strangeness – onto the representational modes of realism and romance. The author focuses exclusively on female novelists, travel writers and painters of the turn-of-the-century exotic, and especially on neglected authors of academically under-researched genres such as the bestselling novel and the travelogue.

Re-examining nineteenth-century Eastscontributes novel approaches to gendered and gendering fictions and travel writing in and of the cultural-geographical-ideological contexts surrounding nineteenth-century Easts. It examines underexplored stories of travel and narratives of encounter to reconsider the western allure of travelling to the Easts – from the Balkans to the Middle and Far East, through a range of diverse critical approaches. It discusses writers – travellers, novelists, and short-story writers – who authored texts based on their varied experiences in eastern lands. It also analyses how views of eastern places became a rich source of material for identity formations related to Empire but also discussions about masculinity and femininity at ‘home’.

This book represents the work of expert scholars, it is also accessible to non-specialists with an interest in travel writing and China, and care has been taken to explain the critical terms and ideas deployed in the essays from recent scholarship of the travel genre.

The book seeks to address how movements across cultures shape the different ways in which China and Chineseness have been imagined and represented since the beginning of the last century. In so doing, it aims to offer an overview of the debate about Chineseness as it has emerged in different global locations.