Dissertation
A land of enchantment: fictional Spain through the eyes of British travelers, 1776-1867
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Summer 2020
DOI: 10.17077/etd.005591
Abstract
In this study, I consider how three British travelers between 1770 and 1870 approached Spain as a place shaped and informed by the literature they had read prior to their travels. The texts I examine, Henry Swinburne’s Travels in Spain in the Years 1775 and 1776, Lady Elizabeth Herbert’s Impressions of Spain in 1866 and George Eliot’s dramatic poem The Spanish Gypsy, all reveal that their authors’ understandings of Spain had been shaped by literature such as Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, St. Teresa of Ávila’s autobiographical writings, or William Hickling Prescott’s History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. When these travelers visited Spain, they expressed concerns about how Spain succeeded or failed to live up to its literary image, especially when considered alongside Spain’s modernity or lack thereof. Therefore, the language of postsecular theory used by Charles Taylor is most appropriate because his model offers a way of thinking about these travelers’ concerns about modernity alongside the desire for the transcendent, or in his terms, enchantment. As this project demonstrates, these authors express both the desire for the transcendent as well as anxieties about what would be lost as modernity progressed. To these travelers, Spain was the place where enchantment seemed most palpable, and it was literature that offered them an access point to the enchantment they could not find in their native Britain.
Travel literature has been studied through many useful paradigms, including postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, feminist theory, etc. However, examining travel literature through postsecular theory offers a way of considering the transcendent, spiritual, and enchanting dimensions of travel, particularly literarily-motivated travel.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A land of enchantment: fictional Spain through the eyes of British travelers, 1776-1867
- Creators
- Annemarie Paloma Pearson de Andrés
- Contributors
- Eric Gidal (Advisor)Florence S Boos (Committee Member)Lori Branch (Committee Member)Claire Fox (Committee Member)Adriana Méndez Rodenas (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- English
- Date degree season
- Summer 2020
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.005591
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- viii, 216 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2020 Annemarie Paloma Pearson de Andrés
- Language
- English
- Description illustrations
- color illustrations
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-216).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
This dissertation considers how three British travelers, Henry Swinburne, Lady Elizabeth Herbert, and George Eliot, used literature as their guide to Spain when they visited between 1776 and 1867. The argument is that these travelers went to Spain seeking “enchantment,” a desire for which had been aroused in them by literature. By using the postsecular language of Charles Taylor, this project offers an approach to travel literature which considers how literature informs travel, particularly in its transcendent, spiritual, and enchanting dimensions. I contend that this literary travel for enchantment was a way of addressing and negotiating these travelers’ anxieties about modernity, such as technological advancement, secularization, and the loss of what they thought was “authentic” in Spanish culture.
- Academic Unit
- English
- Record Identifier
- 9983987796602771
Metrics
20 File views/ downloads
143 Record Views