Travel Narratives, Travel Fictions

Travel Narratives, Travel Fictions
by: Daniel Cooper Alarcón (Author)
Publisher: Lexington Books
Publication Date: 2024/2/2
Language: English
Print Length: 166 pages
ISBN-10: 1666933775
ISBN-13: 9781666933772
Book Description
In Travel Narratives, Travel Fictions, Daniel Cooper Alarcón argues that travel literature performs important social and cultural criticism often overlooked in studies of the genre. By examining non-fiction and fiction novels and short stories that purposefully examine different types of travel in relationship to each other, Cooper Alarcón documents and highlights the sophisticated ways that both types of writing have anticipated and contributed ideas central to critical studies of travel, tourism, and migration. The author uses the term travel fictions to illustrate the ways in which travel narratives (supposed factual accounts of travel) often misrepresent, distort, and fabricate notions about the people and places they purport to describe, creating useful mythologies and hinting at the ways in which the acts of reading and writing have become an integral part of traveling–shaping not just itineraries, but perceptions and beliefs about places travelers visit. Both types of travel writing are influential in this regard and they frequently borrow from one another, mutually reinforcing ideas, tropes, and modes of representation, often in problematic ways.
About the Author
In Travel Narratives, Travel Fictions, Daniel Cooper Alarcón argues that travel literature performs important social and cultural criticism often overlooked in studies of the genre. By examining non-fiction and fiction novels and short stories that purposefully examine different types of travel in relationship to each other, Cooper Alarcón documents and highlights the sophisticated ways that both types of writing have anticipated and contributed ideas central to critical studies of travel, tourism, and migration. The author uses the term travel fictions to illustrate the ways in which travel narratives (supposed factual accounts of travel) often misrepresent, distort, and fabricate notions about the people and places they purport to describe, creating useful mythologies and hinting at the ways in which the acts of reading and writing have become an integral part of traveling–shaping not just itineraries, but perceptions and beliefs about places travelers visit. Both types of travel writing are influential in this regard and they frequently borrow from one another, mutually reinforcing ideas, tropes, and modes of representation, often in problematic ways. Read more