Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England 1783-1820

Description

"Accounts of travel to England reached unprecedented levels of popularity in the German states in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Competition therefore increased for travel writers to produce travelogues which offered the most authentic, original and vibrant picture of England. The wider range of narrative strategies which travellers consequently deployed increasingly drew on the emotional responses of their audience - whether to serve a political purpose, show concern for the darker side to the Industrial Revolution or simply demonstrate the humanitarian interests of the travellers themselves. In this broad-ranging study, Alison E. Martin draws on a variety of travellers, men and women, canonical and forgotten, to chart the fascinating variety of styles and approaches which mark this highly interdisciplinary genre." Review ...richly researched and engagingly written...' (Michael Ritterson, Gettysburg College Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol 43, No 2, 2009) A valuable and thoughtful study of aesthetic strategies in a genre in which their role is all too frequently overlooked... Martin is to be praised for the clarity of her exposition. She displays a thorough grasp of the key points at issue in the aesthetic debate of the period both in Germany and England (with occasional glances across to France), and gives due emphasis to the process of cross-fertilisation between the two countries through translation and travel. (Susan Pickford German Quarterly, 2009) Textnah und detailreich untersucht A. E. Martin Strategien wirkungsästhetischer und rhetorischer Modellierungen in Englandreisen aus fünf Jahrzehnten. (Alexander Košenina Germanistik, 50, 2009, 278-79) In this fascinating new book, Alison Martin picks out six travelogues on England and makes the case that they deserve to be treated as ‘serious’ literature... The case studies are meticulously researched, and she places each text in context with reference to an impressive array of sources, from contemporary letters and reviews (English as well as German) to modern scholarly studies on art, political history, and even geology. Her close analyses of the texts themselves are lively and sophisticated... In the end, the book puts forward convincing arguments for the complexity and seriousness of this writing, and serves to remind us that the boundaries between genres are much more fluid than often supposed. As such, it should be of interest not only to scholars of travel writing but of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and culture more generally. (Hilary Brown Modern Language Review, 105.2, 2010, 586-87) The six case studies presented in this volume have been meticulously researched and contextualised, and some of the research ― especially that concerning Esther Gad and Carl Gottlieb Horstig ― is highly original. (Angus Nicholls Archiv fuer das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 247.162, 2010, 389-90) Martin is able to cover an impressive amount of ground, encompassing visual, oral and literary elements, as well as addressing key gender and socio-critical questions... The volume also constitutes a plea for the literary value of such travel narratives... It is this aspect in particular which makes this excellent volume stand out as an important and innovative contribution to European travel writing scholarship. (Carol Tully Angermion (Yearbook for Anglo-German Literary Criticism, Intellectual History and Cultural Transfers), 3, 2010, 207-10) About the Author Alison E Martin is Assistant Professor of English Literature at the Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg.