Reading and discussion of the great Scandinavian novels; the development of the novel. Readings and discussion in English.

This course examines the broad genre of travel literature by concentrating on travel narratives from the eighteenth century and onwards written by Scandinavian authors. We will discuss the place of travel writing within the history of literature, question problems of definition, and develop an understanding of the genre by looking at a variety of narrators and an array of different types of texts: from the travelogue of the Grand Tour and its parodic reversal, from poetic voyages to the reportage. By progressing chronologically, we will position the texts within the history of the genre and attempt to identify changes in the poetics of the travelogue in different time periods. How did the turn to the Romantic change the relationship between the two stable points of reference in the genre; the object (the geographical area) and the subject (the experiences of the traveling persona)? What attempts were made to renew the genre in the wake of globetrotting and increasing tourism? By drawing on theoretical concerns specific to travel writing studies, we will also analyze narrative techniques, common tropes and rhetorical strategies that come across as genre-specific structural elements in a category notorious for its compositional hybridity and heterogeneity of content. How is the juxtaposition of ‘local’ and ‘global’, ‘center’ and ‘periphery’, ‘home’ and ‘away’, the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ articulated in the narratives? All readings in English.

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Requirements class fulfills