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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Lawrence, Karen R., author.

Title Penelope Voyages : Women and Travel in the British Literary Tradition / Karen R. Lawrence.

Publication Info. Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]
©1994

Item Status

Description 1 online resource.
text file PDF
Series Reading women writing
Reading women writing.
Contents Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Hermes/Penelope -- 1. Exilic Wanderings: Cavendish and Burney -- 2. Composing the Self in Letters: Wollstonecraft's Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark -- 3. "The African Wanderers": Kingsley and Lee -- 4. Woolf's Voyages Out: The Voyage Out and Orlando -- 5 Postmodern "Vessels of Conception": Brooke-Rose and Brophy -- Conclusion: "Questions of Travel" -- Works Cited -- Index
Summary Looking at travel writing by British women from the seventeenth century on, Karen R. Lawrence asks an intriguing question: What happens when, instead of waiting patiently for Odysseus, Penelope voyages and records her journey-when the woman who is expected to waitsets forth herself and traces an itinerary of her own?Lawrence ranges widely, discussing both fiction and nonfiction and traversing the genres of travel letters, realistic and sentimental novels, ethnography, fantasy, and postmodern narrative. In examining works as dissimilar as Margaret Cavendish's rendition of the Renaissance adventure narrative and Christine Brooke-Rose's postmodernist Between, she explores not only the significance of gender for travel writing, but also the value of travel itself for testing the limits of women's social freedoms and restraints.Lawrence shows how writings by Frances Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sarah Lee, Mary Kingsley, Virginia Woolf, and Brigid Brophy reconceive the meanings of femininity in relation to such apparent oppositions as travel/home, other/self, and foreign/domestic. Despite the differences-historical, generic, political-among these writers, Lawrence maintains, they share common insights. Their accounts overturn the dichotomy between adventure and domesticity, demonstrating something illusory within both the stability of home and the freedom of travel.
Note Available through DeGruyter.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-260) and index.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Language In English.
Subject British -- Foreign countries -- Historiography.
British -- Foreign countries.
Historiography.
English prose literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism.
English prose literature -- Women authors.
Travel in literature.
Travel in literature.
Travel writing -- History.
Travel writing.
History.
Travelers' writings, English -- History and criticism.
Travelers' writings, English.
Women and literature -- Great Britain -- Historiography.
Women and literature.
Great Britain.
Women travelers -- Great Britain -- Biography -- History and criticism.
Women travelers.
Biography.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.
Dictionaries.
Dictionaries.
Added Author DeGruyter.
Other Form: Print version: 0801426103 9780801426100 0801499135 9780801499135 (DLC) 94020853 (OCoLC)30594628
ISBN 1501732498
9781501732492 (electronic book)
0801426103
9780801426100
0801499135
9780801499135
Standard No. 10.7591/9781501732492