Travel Writing and Empire

"The book combines detailed evaluations of major contemporary models of analysis - new historicism, travelling theory, and post-colonial studies - with a series of specific studies detailing the complicity of the genre with a history of violent incursion from Columbus's reports from the New World through to the nomadism of postmodern travelogue." "Postcolonial studies has concentrated on travellers as conduits of erasure and appropriation. This book resists the temptation to think in terms of a simple monolithic Eurocentrism and offers a more complex reading of texts produced before, during and after periods of imperial ascendency. In doing so, it provides a more nuanced account of the hegemonic functions of travel writing. As such it is necessary reading for students and academics of cultural studies, literary theory, anthropology and history."--BOOK JACKET.