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A map of travel writing from antiquity to the Victorian age opens this reflection on the distinction between quest and travel, as two modes existing within the same genre, which yet can harbour a variety of discourses, ranging from letters to autobiography, from satire and fantasy to the scientific account and the Baedeker style. However, despite the many narrative masks adopted by travel writing, and the essential ambiguity its literary discourse may adopt, it can be argued that quest and travel can still be seen as bearing distinct features, inasmuch as the personality and the final aims of the traveller provide elements of response to the place visited that dispel the ambiguity of the genre. In the XIX century, history, culture, aesthetics and visual culture enhance the traveller’s response to the spirit of the place. Charles Dickens’s "American Notes" and Anthony Trollope’s "North America", respectively published in 1842 and 1862, while accounting for the writers’ experience in the United States, are remarkably dissimilar. My contention is that in Dickens’s case the travelogue takes the shape and nature of a quest: a journey that had started under the best auspices ended up in bitter disappointment as the writer did not compromise with local newspapers on his plea for international copyright; Dickens’s American experience is loaded with spectral images that make it nightmarish and, on the whole, unpleasant. For Trollope, who started with the best intentions to provide readers with plenty of information, the place proves ungraspable, unmanageable, despite pages of figures and tables of products, prices, values. In Trollope’s case, for different reasons, the spirit of the place instigates a kind of response that produces, instead of the best possible travel book, an unwieldy documentary account of the United States in 1862.
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This essay explores the topos of disappointment and discovery in three major travel writings by significant authors in the European tradition: Goethe, George Eliot, Dickens. With reference in particular to Italy, the chief goal of many classic ‘Grand Tours,’ we find in each initial disappointment at regular intervals in the places visited, most particularly Rome, and in the case of Goethe and Dickens, most particularly with reference to its famous Carnival. George Eliot is examined first, and we find in particular in her case that the pattern is repeated, not only in Italy, but virtually everywhere: Antwerp, Cologne, Weimar. In the case of Goethe, who stayed nearly two years in Italy in the course of his travels, a whole process of Bildung and self-discovery takes place, particularly where two bites of the same cherry are possible, as with Rome. On his first experience of Carnival there, he exclaims sarcastically that “one has to see the Roman carnival to lose all wish to see it again.” But a blissful intervening experience of Naples and some double-takes in Sicily cause him to eat his words. Approaching it afresh, he recognises some of the meanings of the Moccoli rituals with which the Carnival concludes. The extinguishing of others’ candles now signifies for him the joyous celebration of the simultaneous destruction of the old and return of the new in spring. Dickens too came to love this festival after an initial rejection of Rome comparable to that of George Eliot. But the main disappointment/discovery motif in "Pictures from Italy" concerns Genoa, where to begin with he declares “I never was so dismayed in my life.” Drawing on an anti-Catholic tradition in English travel writing that goes back to Addison, he denounces the squalor and neglect that is rife in the city as a manifestation of the church’s indifference to questions of social welfare. But even at the outset, at a time when “I little thought I should ever come to have an attachment for the very stones in the streets of Genoa,” he begins a process of discovery in Italy that will lead eventually to a delighted appreciation of the Moccoli festival at Carnival: “anything so gay, so bright and lively as the whole scene there, would be difficult to imagine.”
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The medieval story of the Irish saint, Brendan the Navigator (c. 484–c. 577) and his voyage in search of the Earthly Paradise has inspired many artists. A narrative poem “The Voyage of St. Brendan” (1848) by Denis Florence MacCarthy was written at the time of the Irish Famine (1845–1849) which led to a mass emigration to America. The poet connects the past with the present, resurrecting the belief that St. Brendan was the first European to discover America. He combines Brendan’s patriotism with his courage to cross the ocean in search of the Earthly Paradise identified with America. The aim of this paper is to compare the detailed descriptions of Ireland with the marvellous images of the Earthly Paradise in MacCarthy’s work. By looking at the portrayals of both places through historical revisionist lenses, I argue that MacCarthy creates a transtemporal bridge between two islands of happiness - the human and the spiritual one - in order to revive the Irish pride and hope.
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Reverend Henry Lansdell’s (1841–1919) preaching position allowed him to travel extensively, first in Europe and gradually to make long and arduous journeys in Russia, Siberia and Central Asia. His eight-volume travel accounts, running to several editions in England, confirmed Lansdell’s reputation as a talented and careful observer with unparalleled knowledge of the geopolitical situation in Central Asia in the second half of the 19th century. My paper examines the rhetorical strategies Lansdell employed in writing his last book on Central Asian sensitive border regions under the imperial security constraints of the moment. Lansdell’s failure of self-censorship in fact erupts in concealed messages, hidden between the words, smuggled past the censors, to reach certain sections of his readership able to read between the lines, revealing the undisclosed and unsaid of his repeat journeys.
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In July 1820, William, Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth, set out for the Continent in order to retrace the itinerary of William’s youthful trip, documented in "The Prelude". During the tour, Dorothy and Mary kept travel journals. Dorothy’s was first edited and published by Ernest de Selincourt in 1941; Mary’s remained in manuscript until recently. The two journals are very different. Mary’s journal repeatedly relies on Dorothy’s to provide details of their shared experience, while the only reference that Dorothy ever makes to Mary’s writing is in connection with an inkbottle that Mary wants to buy in Interlaken, Switzerland. Readers of the two journals include the two diarists themselves, William Wordsworth, Henry Crabb Robinson, Sarah Hutchinson and Dora Wordsworth. Soon, the readers’ circle expands to include more friends and acquaintances. This paper discusses the intertextual relationships between these travel diaries as well as their reception by their first readers.
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For the English poets of the Romantic period wandering or roaming without fixed direction or purpose suggested not idleness but the possibility of rediscovering one’s sense of place and establishing a meaningful connection with nature. Peripatetic poetry tends to appreciate the need for movement, liberty, and spontaneity as well as the sense of openness and connectedness. By looking at two selected poems, one by Coleridge and one by Wordsworth, the article seeks to offer some notes on the Romantic attitudes to walking, especially in terms of their approach to nature, the role of imagination and experience, as well as in the context of their reaction (especially in case of Wordsworth) to the growth of mass-tourism in the period.
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The aim of this essay is to show how Henry Russell-Killough’s explorations of various parts of the world reveal both his colonizer’s perception and his awareness of the biased perception of Europeans towards those they did not know, particularly Asians. This paper explores his travels to Asia, through two series of narratives: a series of articles in English published in an Indian paper, "The Englishman", between October 1860 and January 1861, and a book in French, "Seize mille lieues à travers l’Asie et l’Océanie" (1866). The articles were aimed at English readers living in India, which adds a political dimension to the literary travel narrative. Russell’s stylistic choices, in these texts and others, show that he made the travel narrative a painting of the Other, opening onto future exchanges between Western and Eastern cultures. By insisting on the richness of differences, on the beauty of these geographical areas unknown to most of the world at the time, on the artistic talent of Asian people, he also opened European eyes onto Eastern beauty and future exchanges between the West and the East.
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In the Sherlock Holmes canon of 60 stories, we find various representations of the exotic and the foreign, which, arguably, is a reflection of Britain’s geopolitical position as well as sentiments current in the period in which the stories were written. In view of this, it is intriguing to see how easily Conan Doyle exploited his readers’ prejudices concerning the non-British, from belief in cannibalism among savages, vampirism to racism. Given the genre which the stories represent, worth exploring are the ways in which the exotic and the foreign are used to construct mystery plots. This analysis focuses on the assumptions that Conan Doyle makes concerning his readers’ knowledge of the exotic and the foreign, or, more to the point, their ignorance. These assumptions have allowed him to ascribe a great number of outlandish or sensational features to human characters, animals, artefacts, and substances. The paper examines a selection of the stories which feature culturally displaced characters.
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Discussed alongside its cultural context - the infamous Opium Wars with China, the increasing unrest in British colonies and eugenic concerns involving race - Dickens’s unfinished novel reflects his growing uneasiness about the righteousness of British imperial hegemony and deep-rooted fears of due retribution for imperial sins such as violence, exploitation or controversial spoils of imperial conquests. The aim of the article is to examine "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" as a forerunner of the imperial Gothic genre, with its themes of psychic regression, spectres of atavism, reverse colonisation, going native and moral and spiritual corruption of the coloniser. Questioning British expansive imperialist policies as it does, the novel foreshadows the tropes which later novelists like Henry Rider Haggard, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle or Joseph Conrad explored more fully in their writing.
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The vision of mythological Medea allures and repels the Victorians. The late Victorian women writers recognised the powerful figure of the Colchian princess, who has served as the embodiment of female cruelty and brutality. However, women authors saw the need to portray Medea not exclusively as a ruthless killer, but rather as a desperate woman entangled in the web of social, and marital constraints. One of these writers was Amy Levy, an English poet, whose insights into the Woman Question have recently been rediscovered by literary scholars. In this article, I explore how Medea, as reworked by Levy, personifies the concept of the Other in nineteenth century English literature. Looking at Medea through the lens of monstrosity theories, I argue that Medea’s depiction becomes symptomatic of the larger problem of perception of unconventional women in late Victorian middle-class society.
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In the present study we focus on the concept of the historical novel from the point of view of its poetics in two selected works from British and Czech literature. We deal with this genre type in the context of two perspectives: literary morphology and research of surroundings in these two texts. The main point of the study is an analysis, on one side, of the historical novel as the first work and, on the other hand, already famous historical novel in the true sense of the word. The research is based on a comparison of both texts and partially on the genre methodology. The relevant part is the concept of narrative strategy of the work from the aspect of the author. Another significant component is also depicting of the atmosphere and the capturing of the contemporary moment. A part of the article deals with a historiosophical element.
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… ač ve hvězdách si často čtu a rád… – od titulu ocitovaného ze Shakespearova Sonetu 14 bychom takto docela dobře mohli pokračovat i druhým veršem. Čtení sonetů i básnických ekfrází je totiž často nahlížením do hlubin lidské zkušenosti a čtením hvězdným, povznášejícím. Naše úsudky o nich však opravdu nevzešly z hvězd, ale z aktivního propojení literárněvědných znalostí a nástrojů s těmi intermediálními. A sborník, do kterého právě nahlížíte, nevznikl ani k nějakému výročí, ani jako výsledek studentské konference či soutěže. Vzešel z radosti ze společné interpretační práce studentek, studentů a dvou vyučujících. Zázemí osvojování poznatků a diskusím poskytl seminář Intermediální a adaptační studia, který je zařazen do prvního ročníku navazujícího magisterského studia Literatura a mezikulturní komunikace na FF MU.
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