Travellers' Tales of Wonder : : Chatwin, Naipaul, Sebald / / Simon Cooke.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Edinburgh University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2013-2000
• VerfasserIn: Cooke, Simon,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (216 p.) :; 4 B/W illustrations 1 additional cover image

Exploring travellers’ tales of wonder in contemporary literature, this study challenges a sensibility of disenchantment with travel. It reassesses travel writing as an aesthetically and ethically innovative form in contemporary international literature, and demonstrates the crucial role of wonder in the travel narratives of writers such as Bruce Chatwin, V.S. Naipaul, and W.G. Sebald. Their ‘travellers’ tales of wonder’ are read as a challenge to the hubris of thinking the world too well known, and an invitation to encounter the world – including its most troubling histories – with a sense of wonder.Key FeaturesReassesses the place of travel writing in literary history to argue that the genre is important as a site of aesthetic innovation and ethical engagement in contemporary literatureDemonstrates the central role of wonder in travel accounts often regarded as narratives of disenchantmentExplores the way travellers’ tales of wonder recover and renew ancient and early modern forms in approaching modern and contemporary issuesOffers new, in-depth readings of the work of three major writers, in each case drawing on as yet unpublished results of archival research

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: The Wonder that Came Later -- I. ‘Horizon of expectations’: Travels in Literary History -- 1. A Question of Form: Genre and the Journey -- 2. ‘An End to Journeying’: Travel and its Discontents in Late Modernity -- 3. Forms of Recovery and Renewal: Travels in Contemporary Literature -- II. Readings in Contemporary Travellers’ Tales of Wonder -- 4. Bruce Chatwin and the ‘modern WONDER VOYAGE’: In Patagonia (1977) -- 5. V. S. Naipaul and the ‘gift of wonder’: The Enigma of Arrival (1987) -- 6. W. G. Sebald’s Travels through ‘das unentdeckte Land’: Die Ringe des Saturn (1995) -- Afterword: The ‘unlimited vicissitudes of travelling’ -- Bibliography -- Index