The Romance of Travel
Romance, as it confirms human agency with regards to understanding the world and organizing one's existence, is an enabling genre. Northrop Frye identifies "romance" in its questing, adventurous, persistently nostalgic, and "perennially child-like quality" as the "nearest of all literary forms to the wish-fulfillment dream" (186). Arguably, many of the texts that we have examined over the course of the term can be understood as (more or less) participating in the affirmative conventions of romance in the ways that they show men and woman turning travel into a journey.
Take for instance Gilpin's essay "On Picturesque Beauty:" what a light hearted quest ("the searching after effects") it is that he assigns to the picturesque traveler. He would not bring this intention of travel into conflict with the other more "useful ends of travel," but he also offers it as a goal for those who "travel without any end at all." Gilpin even describes the amusements of picturesque travel as a sort of adventure:
This great object [beauty of every kind] we pursue through the scenery of nature. We seek it among all the ingredients of landscape -- trees -- rocks -- broken-grounds -- woods -- rivers -- lakes -- plains -- vallies -- mountains -- and distances.
The gaze of the traveler ranges "with supreme delight among the sweet vales of Switzerland," as well as through the "limits of art;" it "seeks" after nature's "various effects;" the "scene of grandeur bursts on the eye." Indeed, Gilpin's picturesque traveler is very active. Moreover, when the traveler finds him or herself among less visually appealing natural environments, then it is that the wish-fulfilling imagination can be "let [. . .] loose" to "plant h...
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...eader, as he reads personal travel accounts that are informed by those same conventions, enjoys a rapport with the authors, texts, and characters within those texts that make him/her feel (at least they made me feel) as though they (and I) were going somewhere.
Works Cited
Auden, W. H. and Elizabeth Mayer. "Intoduction." Italian Journey by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. London: Penguin, 1970.
Byron, George Gordon, Lord. "Byron's Swiss Tour" (1816). http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/Travel/Byron_Oberland.htm
Frye, Northrop. The Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1973.
Gilpin, William. "On Picturesque Beauty." http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/Travel/gilpine2.htm
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Italian Journey. London: Penguin, 1970.
Wordsworth, William. "Tintern Abbey." http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/Tintern/Tintern_c.htm
Servomaa, Sonja. “Nature Of Beauty—Beauty Of Nature.” Dialogue & Universalism 15.1/2 (2005): Academic Search Premier. Web.
In Dante’s Inferno, Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the protagonists’ relationships with their companions becomes an essential subplot within each text. Their relationships are crucial in order to complete their journey and in some cases complete each other. In addition, there are many characteristics in each text that are unrealistic representations of life. For instance, the environment of hell the Inferno, Don Quixote’s fictional world, and the instant marriages in Pride and Prejudice are all things that are not typically seen in real life. These unrealistic characteristics affect how each relationship develops, however, these factors do not take away from the significance of each relationship. In each text, the lucrative ambitions of the characters are initially the motive of many relationships rather than the desire for true companionship. A major part of the relationships development is how the characters’ companionships transition from ones that are based on individual ambitions to ones that are built on the desire for intimate relationships.
In the Harlequin romance Time of the Temptress, by Violet Winspear, the author seems to be trying to write an intelligent story of romance, bettered by its literary self-awareness. She fails on both counts. Winspear appears to recognize that more valued literature tends to involve symbolism and allusions to other works. It seems she is trying to use archetypes and allusions in her own novel, but her references to alternate literature and culture are embarrassingly obvious and awkward. Another inter-literary connection, though, is more difficult to notice unless the book is pondered -- something the typical romance reader is not likely to do. Although Winspear attempts to give her book literary value by tying it to Gone With the Wind, because of the limitations of her chosen genre, and her own apparent inabilities as a writer, she cannot grasp the depth that makes Gone With the Wind a highly regarded romance work.
Romance narrative is a type of writing that usually features a hero and his journey or quest. The hero reaches a transcendent goal through tests or trials. The narrative is often represented as a circle because the story begins with the hero’s goal. It then continues with the hero’s journey through the difficulties that he must overcome to achieve that goal and finishes with the initial goal accomplished. It’s a popular format because it externalizes the internal struggles that people face in their own lives in overcoming problems and especially in defining themselves as they transform from childhood to adulthood. The narrative follows a pattern of initial innocence, acceptance of duties and trials, then failure and despair. The failure is
Danny Kaye, famous actor and comedian, once said, "To travel is to take a journey into yourself". He is suggesting that by seeing a new part of the world, one is inevitably confronted with deeper realizations about one’s self. Thomas C. Foster, author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, would likely agree. In his book, he argues that every trip in literature is actually a quest. The word "quest" conjures images of knights in shining armor, princesses, and dragons, but Foster uses the word in a more archetypal sense. A journey, Foster says, needs only to fit five relatively simple criteria to be considered a quest (1-3). Quoyle, the protagonist of Annie Proulx's novel, The Shipping News, undergoes a life-changing journey that clearly meets all necessary criteria set forth by Foster to be regarded as a quest.
She starts by bringing a pessimistic view to photographs of nature, by describing what may or may not lie just outside the boundaries of the picture. Mockingly she leads the reader to assume that there are no real nature photos left in the world, but rather only digitaly enhanced photos of nature wit...
Romance can be defined as a medieval form of narrative which relates tales of chivalry and courtly love. Its heroes, usually knights, are idealized and the plot often contains miraculous or superatural elements. According to Tony Davenport the central medieval sense of romance is ' of narratives of chivalry, in which knights fight for honour and love.' The term amour coutois ( courtly love) was coined by the French critic Gaston Paris in 1883 to categorise what medieval French lyricists or troubadours referred to as ' fin armors'. Romances and lyrics began to develop in the late fourteenth century England, author like Chaucer or Hoccleve produced some of the first english medieval narratives. But how does medieval literature present the expericence of romantic love. In order to answer this question this essay will focus on two tales from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: the Knight's Tales and the Franklin's Tales. It will show that medieval romance can be used as a vehicle to promote chivalric behaviour as well as exploring a range of philosophical, political, and literary question.
vivid words and picturesque landscapes that lead to your heart.The theme of the poem is
Gillis, Christina “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”: Seduction, Space, and A Fictional Mode.” Studies in Short Fiction. Vol. 18 Issue 1, (Winter 1981): 65 Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 November 2013.
Eliza Haywood is a visionary. In her set of love letters, Love Letters on All Occasions, Haywood distinctly uses select words, such as metaphors, to subconsciously drive home the message to the reader. Whether it be re-enforcing the relationship between the two writers, or rather undercutting it, the reader understands their relationship more fully thanks to Haywood’s choice words. In Haywood’s collection Love Letters on All Occasions from her novel Fantomina and Other Works, two letters in particular, “Letter XXV” and “Letter XXVII”, Haywood’s use of metaphors and select word choices help to reinforce the sentiment between the writers to the reader.
Each day we walk outside and we see something beautiful. It is called Nature. Outside it holds so much more than we can see. We love the world around us and it is up to us to see it. The world shows us all that it can hold. The problem is we look at the world and see simple things. We see things that have no meaning, but are just objects. However, everything in Nature can have a hidden meaning. “Vivid pictures of landscape, but in them the Yankee point of view through which nature is seen is as vital to the meaning as the things portrayed.” (Lynen) Nature has meaning behind each part of nature. The problem of nature is each person has a different interpretation. One thing that might seem beautiful and wonderful to me is complete terrible or scary to another. We base our meaning off our own experiences. People who have been trapped alone in the forest are usually scared of going back into a forest by their own. We base what we know and how we feel off of past experiences. Robert Frost wrote the poems, Acquainted with the Night and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening which describes nature that has three main hidden meanings: things hidden in the stars, mountains hold amazing features and pure white is a beautiful and wonderful thing.
Prickett, Stephen. “Romantic Literature.” The Romantics. Ed. Stephen Prickett. New York: Holmes and . Meier Publishers, 1981
Radway, Janice. 1987. "Reading Reading the Romance." In Studies in Culture: An Introductory Reader, ed. Ann Gray and Jim McGuigan. London: Arnold, 1997, pp. 62-79.
Throughout the centuries, literature has provided a way to express oneself, while at the same time, allowing the reader to experience a different kind of life through the stories. As a creation of humans, literature tends to reflect the ideals and thoughts of its writer, while also providing a glimpse into the society, in which the writer penned the story. Perhaps one of the greatest and most intriguing human emotions is love and this theme is present in literature from its beginning to the present day. However, as people and societies changed and evolved, so did the attitudes toward love change with the times. In Medieval French Literature, love is often portrayed as an unreachable emotion and is associated with challenges and suffering, reflecting a society, in which arranged marriages were common and based on title and wealth instead of love. This view of love changes in the French Renaissance, where the focus shifts to material and physical pleasures, reflecting a society, that is ready to change the old values and create something new and rendered to the individual.
Many of the classical travel narratives of the past are presented with a main character, with the story revolving around their journey and experience in foreign places. Examples of the traditional way of travel writing are classics like Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby, which is about the writers’ journey to Italy and how he met different people, including his wife, throughout the trip (Dalrymple & Theroux, 2011). There are also recent books like Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert which talks about a middle-aged woman’s travel experience as well as her self-discovery during her trip to India. It is a traditional way of travel writing to be a personal narrative and focus on a hero or heroine. In this essay, I will talk about a piece of writing conforming to this idea and another that does not, they are, namely Triumph on Mount Everest by Stacy Allison and Why We Travel by Pico Lyer.