Travel novel

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It would be very helpful to find information here that went beyond links to thematically similar articles and a purely (arbitrary) list of travel novels. What does the specialist literature say about the travel novel?

The travel novel is part of the travel literature , which in its entirety reports on travel. In contrast to the travel report, the travel novel is more artistic than factual. The decisive characteristic, which at the same time serves to distinguish it from other forms, is the fictitious transformation as travel experiences.

The travel novel can be delimited in terms of content from neighboring forms, such as the state novel , the adventure novel , the picaresque novel or the novel of lies. Periegese is considered a forerunner and early form, which was already known in antiquity .

A special case of the travel novel can be compared to the film genre “ Roadmovie ”. In this case, the text content describes a journey without an actual destination or arrival; typical protagonists are outsiders and dropouts .

Function of the journey in the travel novel

Example sky over the desert

In Paul Bowles ' novel Heaven over the desert (1948) the main character Port travels deeper and deeper into the Sahara together with his wife Kit to find himself and to put his marriage back on track; As in many other travel novels, this venture fails because Ports are inherent problems and cannot be resolved at all by changing location. In contrast to authors like Lawrence Durrell , Norman Lewis , Robert Byron or Patrick Leigh Fermor , who have shown curiosity about the foreign land in their work, Bowles - although he was intimately familiar with the region - learns very little about North Africa , and instead of being unforgettably beautiful, the characters in this novel only collect an endless series of nightmarish impressions.

Examples of travel novels

literature

  • Travel novel . In: Günther Schweikle, Irmgard Schweikle: Metzler Literature Lexicon. Terms and definitions. 2nd Edition. JB Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1990, p. 384 f.
  • Gero von Wilpert: Subject dictionary of literature. Kröner, Stuttgart, pp. 759-762

Web links

  • Travel Studies. Retrieved January 5, 2018 (via a number of high-quality English language travel novels).