Feminism and the Politics of Travel after the Enlightenment (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650–1850) - Tapa dura

Schlick (Queen's Univ., Ontario, Canada) presents an intriguing examination of how notions of gender and perceptions of the value of travel interrelate in writing from the late 18th through the 19th centuries. In a somewhat unexpected move, the author treats selections from traditional, nonfiction travel writing as well as literary fiction with travel as a theme. Readers will find Schlick's exploration theoretically well grounded....Most broadly useful are the introduction ("Travel, Knowledge, Utopia"), chapter 1 ("The Sex of Travel: Sexual Contract and Enlightenment Travel in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft"), and the epilogue ("Moving Forward"). These sections of the book provide a solid critical framework for advanced scholars interested in the historical notions of travel as a public, political, tough male activity as opposed to home as a private, domestic, soft female activity. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE * Yael Schlick offers a carefully researched volume which considers the intersections between fictional and nonfictional travel literature and gender post-Enlightenment. Schlick's work examines both male and female contributions to the genre of travel writing over time, with special attention paid to the 'educational, political and emancipatory potential of travel' in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 'gendering' travel the author attempts, with success, to demonstrate the nuanced experiences of the female traveler, suggesting that the historical realities of travel for women were often far afield from the broader social expectations for their sex. . . .In its depth, Schlick's text serves as both a survey of post-Enlightenment travel literature and a detailed analysis of gender in that context. Feminism and the Politics of Travel After the Enlightenment is undoubtedly a valuable resource for the specialist in the field, particularly those with prior knowledge of the period texts with which Schlick so masterfully engages. * Nineteenth Century Studies * Any doubts one might have about the timeliness of this excellent study are dispelled by Schlick's discussion, in her brief epilogue, of recent accounts by Robyn Davidson and Sara Wheeler of their travels in the Australian desert and Antarctica, respectively. By providing evidence that female travelers still struggle, even today, 'to make a space for their narrative or selves within the dominant conceptions of travel and within male dominated spaces', Schlick drives home her book's point in an unexpected and meaningful way. * Nineteenth-Century French Studies *

Taking the Enlightenment and the feminist tradition to which it gave rise as its historical and philosophical coordinates, Feminism and the Politics of Travel After the Enlightenment explores the coincidence of feminist vindications and travel in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the way travel's utopian dimension and feminism's utopian ideals have intermittently fed off each other in productive ways. Travel's gender politics is analyzed in the works of J.-J. Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Stephanie-Felicite de Genlis, Germaine de Stael, Frances Burney, Flora Tristan, Suzanne Voilquin, Gustave Flaubert George Sand, Robyn Davidson, and Sara Wheeler.