| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系碩博士班 === 94 === Abstract
Isabella Lucy Bird, one of the most famous Victorian traveling ladies, was born on October 15 in 1831. From 1854 to 1901, she had been to Canada, Australia, Hawaii, Colorado, Japan, Malaya, India, Middle East, China, Korea, and Morocco. She wrote and published her abundant traveling experiences. Among her twelve published travelogues, I chose Unbeaten Tracks in Japan as my thesis project. This thesis investigates Isabella Bird’s subject position. The research methodology I employ to examine this question is Sara Mills’ discourse theory. Mills adopts Foucault’s notion of “discourse” to analyze nineteenth-century women travelers’ writings. Chapter One investigates why Bird adopts the letter form to construct her travel writings, and how Bird’s letter writing does not conform to the parameter of traditional letter writing and further examines the connections between colonial and feminine discourse, and epistolary writing. Chapter Two focuses on the colonial discourse that impinges on the textual construction of Bird’s travel narratives. First it illustrates how Europeans define non-Europeans by imperialistic/colonialist viewpoints. The chapter also shows that there is another anti-colonial narrative position that undercuts colonial stance. Chapter Three deals with feminine discourse. To be more specific, I examine the close relationship between the historical context and Bird’s feminine subject position. That is to say, I examine how the femininity that circulated in the Victorian period determines the construction of Bird’s travel narratives. In this way, we can know distinctly the conflict between discourses, especially colonial and feminine ones.
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