A Tourist's guide to the authority of presentation in travel narratives: classifying the other, aesthetizing the self

Abstract

This thesis is an endeavor to bring a new perspective to travel literature through a twofold classification of the narratives. The proposed classification differentiates two types of travel narratives according to the degree of the encounter that their writer goes through during the journey and/or the writing period. In this respect, it is an attempt to manifest how the first group of narratives, namely the public ones, are tainted by historical discourses, social prejudices and cultural myths, while the second group focuses more on the personal experiences of the writers and their aesthetical outlook on the visited place. The personal travel narrative is something more than a travel account; it is a search for the self, a search for one’s self in the foreign, in the other. This nuance between the public and personal narratives is the inspiration for and the essence of this thesis. However, before clarifying this distinction, a chapter on the history of travel literature along with a subsequent one on public narratives will serve as a background for the discussion on personal accounts. Within this framework, a variety of works by Henry James, Aldous Huxley, Lawrence Durrell, and Salman Rushdie will be used as primary sources, and the discussion will be bolstered by the theories of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and Homi Bhabha.