The Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing
The Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing

Author: Alfred Bendixen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-01-29

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1139827847

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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.

American Writers and the Picturesque Tour
American Writers and the Picturesque Tour

Author: Beth L. Lueck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-28

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1135813590

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Explores a beloved genre Even before the age of the Romantics, travel literature was a favorite genre of English and American writers and readers. After the War of 1812, Americans' passion for scenic beauty inspired them to take the picturesque tour of America as well as going to Europe for the requisite Grand Tour. The written American version of the popular British tour in various guidebooks helped shape the literature of the new nation as nearly every major writer of the first half of the 19th century contributed to it from Poe, who provided several comic pieces, and Irving to Thoreau, for whom the tour symbolized moral and spiritual growth, and Margaret Fuller. Offers new perspectives American writers adapted the picturesque to express their nationalistic sentiments; picturesque discourse offered a flexible series of conventions that enable writers to celebrate the places, people, and legends that set America apart. This volume demonstrates the vital role of this genre in the formation of national literary taste and national culture and offers fresh and exciting perspectives on the topic. Includes index. Also includes maps.