Imperial eyes : travel writing and transculturation

Author:

Pratt, Mary Louise, 1948-

Format:

Book

Language:

English

Imprint:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2008

Subject:

Europe - Relations - Latin America
Europe - Relations - Africa
Latin America - Relations - Europe
Africa - Relations - Europe
Latin America - Description and travel
Africa - Description and travel
Latin America - Historiography
Africa - Historiography
Imperialism
European prose literature - History and criticism
Travel writing - Europe - History and criticism

ISBN:

9780415438162, 0415438160, 9780415438179, 0415438179, 9780203932933, and 0203932935

Description:

xiv, 276 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Bibliographic Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 244-268) and index

Contents:

Introduction : criticism in the contact zone -- pt. 1. Science and sentiment, 1750-1800 -- Science, planetary consciousness, interiors -- Narrating the anti-conquest -- Anti-conquest II : the mystique of reciprocity -- Eros and abolition -- pt. 2. The reinvention of América, 1800-50 -- Alexander von Humboldt and the reinvention of América -- Reinventing América II : the capitalist vanguard and the exploratrices sociales -- Reinventing América/reinventing Europe : Creole self-fashioning -- pt. 3. Imperial stylistics, 1860-2007 -- From the Victoria N'yanza to the Sheraton San Salvador -- In the neocolony : modernity, mobility, globality

Summary:

"How has travel writing produced 'the rest of the world' for European readerships? How does one speak of transculturation from the colonies to the metropolis? Studies in colonial and exploration discourse have identified the enormous significance of travel writing as an ideological apparatus of Empire. The study of travel writing has, however, remained either naively celebratory or dismissive, treating texts as symptoms of imperial ideologies. Imperial Eyes explores European travel and exploration writing, in connection with European economic and political expansion since 1700. It is both a study in genre, and a critique of ideology. Pratt examines how travel books by Europeans create the domestic subject of European imperialism, and how they engage metropolitan reading publics with expansionist enterprises whose material benefits accrued mainly to the very few. These questions are addressed through readings of particular travel accounts connected with particular historical transitions, from the eighteenth century to Paul Theroux: sentimental travel writing and its links with abolitionist rhetoric, discursive reinventions of South America during the period of its independence (1800-1840), and eighteenth-century European writings on Southern Africa in the context of inland expansion."--Publisher's description

Collection:

BGC Course Reserves

Call Number:

D34.L29 P73 2008

Available

c.1

Course Name:

481. Unsettling Things: Expanding Conversations in Studies of the Material World. BGC Spring 2023

Instructor:

Linn, M.
Thompson, D.