Mobility at Large: Globalization, Textuality and Innovative Travel Writing
Author(s): Justin D. Edwards (Author), Rune Graulund (Author)
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Publication Date: 31 Mar. 2012
Language: English
Print length: 224 pages
ISBN-10: 9781846318214
ISBN-13: 1846318211
Book Description
Mobility at Large explores a unique trajectory of travel writing. Instead of focussing on best-selling travel texts by Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Alain de Botton and others, this book examines a strand of innovative contemporary travel writing wherein the authors experiment with form, content and the politics of representation. In this, innovative travel texts by a range of writers from Michael Ondaatje and Caryl Phillips to Daphne Marlatt and Sam Miller transform the genre by inscribing travel, migration, mobility and displacement within a variety of experimental textual strategies to work through questions of movement and the politics of personal identity in relation to the complex interlocutions of space, place and subjectivity. As a result, Mobility at Large challenges those critics who dismiss the genre as inherently conservative and inextricably bound up in a colonial, Eurocentric tradition. The book also documents a long and rich tradition of travel writing that existed well beyond the influence of Europe.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Clear, interesting, provocative and well-argued …I believe this is – surprisingly – the first book-length study of experimental travel writing. It deserves to be considered in the company of the most important critical works on contemporary travel writing.
Alasdair Pettinger
“This study successfully counters the claim that travel writing is ‘doomed to repeat politically problematic images of colonization, racism and exoticism’ (p. 198). By the practice of ideological and textual decentring, Edwards and Graulund compellingly argue, innovative travel writing has the potential to expose new forms of Empire that are pervasive in contemporary globalization movements.”–Orbis Litterarum
This study successfully counters the claim that travel writing is ‘doomed to repeat politically problematic images of colonization, racism and exoticism’ (p. 198). By the practice of ideological and textual decentring, Edwards and Graulund compellingly argue, innovative travel writing has the potential to expose new forms of Empire that are pervasive in contemporary globalization movements.– “Orbis Litterarum 68:1 87”
About the Author
Justin D. Edwards is Research Professor in English at the University of Surrey and the author of Postcolonial Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and Exotic Journeys: Exploring the Erotics of U.S. Travel Literature, 1840-1930 (University of New Hampshire, 2001). Rune Graulund is Lecturer in English at the University of Strathclyde and co-editor (with Justin D. Edwards) of Postcolonial Travel Writing: Critical Explorations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
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