Pour une litterature voyageuse: Travel and Identity in Late Twentieth-Century France

• Main Author: Hindson, Katy
• Published: University of Liverpool 2007
• Subjects: 840
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.490601

This thesis is a response to the changing nature of French Studies in the UK, and is also the recognition of the growing need to explore the field's intercultural dimensions. Although the research for the thesis has been undertaken within the French department of the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies, it is primarily interdisciplinary, engaging for instance with recent developments in Studies in Travel Writing, Gender Studies and Translation Studies. After a period of apparent decline of French travel literature in the 1960s and 1970s, the geme experienced a resurgence in the 1980s, leading to the launch in 1990 of the (now major) annual 'Etonnants Voyageurs' festival held in Saint-Malo, the appearance frqm 1990 of the associated journal Gulliver, and the publication of the manifesto, Pour une litterature voyageuse, in 1992. The thesis focuses specifically on critical approaches to the movement, but considers at the same time the wider phenomena ofliterature in French and postcolonial Francophone identities. Research Questions This thesis addre~ses a series of research questions, including: What are the principal characteristics of travel literature in late twentieth-century France and in particular that related to the Pour une litterature voyageuse movement? What critical strategies might be elaborated to approach this material? How has the Pour une litterature voyageuse movement elaborated an imaginary genealogy, drawing on previous texts and traditions to project its own identity? What does travel literature in late twentiethcentury France suggest about national identity and about the need to understand national identity in intercultural terms? In what ways does travel literature illuminate issues of gender in late twentieth-century France? What does the shift in emphasis by this movement towards a litterature-monde signify for travel literature and, on a wider scale, for the ways in which the boundaries of literature are defined? Impact of Thesis This thesis aims to (i) offer a timely and original account of the important Pour une litterature voyageuse movement, likely to be of interest to scholars in the UK, France and elsewhere; (ii) elaborate an interdisciplinary and original methodology for the approach of contemporary travel literature that will be of relevance to those working in a variety of disciplines; and (iii) explore issues of intercultural communication and translation, thus contributing to the ongoing redefinition of French Studies in the UK, and ofthe Modern Languages field more generally.