Travel Writing in Dutch and German, 1790-1930: Modernity, Regionality, Mobility / Edition 1

by Alison Martin, Lut Missinne, Beatrix van Dam

Overview

This volume focuses on how travel writing contributed to cultural and intellectual exchange in and between the Dutch- and German-speaking regions from the 1790s to the twentieth-century interwar period. Drawing on a hitherto largely overlooked body of travelers whose work ranges across what is now Germany and Austria, the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking Belgium, the Dutch East Indies and Suriname, the contributors highlight the interrelations between the regional and the global and the role alterity plays in both spheres. They therefore offer a transnational and transcultural perspective on the ways in which the foreign was mediated to audiences back home. By combining a narrative perspective on travel writing with a socio-historically contextualized approach, essays emphasize the importance of textuality in travel literature as well as the self-positioning of such accounts in their individual historical and political environments. The first sustained analysis to focus specifically on these neighboring cultural and linguistic areas, this collection demonstrates how topographies of knowledge were forged across these regions by an astonishingly diverse range of travelling individuals from professional scholars and writers to art dealers, soldiers, (female) explorers, and scientific collectors. The contributors address cultural, aesthetic, political, and gendered aspects of travel writing, drawing productively on other disciplines and areas of scholarly research that encompass German Studies, Low Countries Studies, comparative literature, aesthetics, the history of science, literary geography, and the history of publishing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367875220
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/10/2019
Series:	Routledge Research in Travel Writing
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alison E. Martin is Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Reading, UK.

Lut Missinne is Professor of Modern Dutch Literature at the University of Münster, Germany.

Beatrix van Dam is Research Associate in Modern Dutch Literature at the University of Münster, Germany.

Table of Contents

List of Figures vii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction Lut Missinne Alison E. Martin Beatrix Van Dam 1

Part I Foreign Neighbours 17

1 Identity Formation and the Gaze of the Other: Flanders and Belgium in German Travel Narratives, 1830-1850 Hubert Roland 19

2 Phlegmatic Aquatic Philistines: The Netherlands Described in Nineteenth-Century French and German Travelogues Kim Andringa 39

3 Wandervögel in Wartime Flanders: Encountering Foreign Heritage and Imagining a German Future during the First World War Robbert-Jan Adriaansen 55

Part II Travel and New Ways of Circulating Knowledge 73

4 "Fresh Fields of Exploration": Cultures of Scientific Knowledge and Ida Pfeiffer's Second Voyage round the World (1856) Alison E. Martin 75

5 Hunting for Sources: Dreams and Realities of Nineteenth-Century Archival Travel Herman Paul 95

6 "Nachrichten von Surinam": Representations of a Former Dutch Colony in German Travel Literature, 1790-1900 Carl Haarnack 114

7 Tourism, Ethnography, and Aesthetic Modernism: Louis Couperus in Africa Carl Niekerk 139

Part III Mediating Knowledge 157

8 Changing Places, Shifting Narratives: Nineteenth-Century Dutch Travellers in Germany Arianne Baggerman Rudolf Dekker 159

9 The Making of a Founding Father: Willem Jonckbloet in Search of Manuscripts and a Reputation Johan Oosterman 182

10 Mobility and the Museum: Aesthetic and Commercial Influences on Travel in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany Renata Schellenberg 198

11 Modern Travel: A Personal Affair Anna P. H. Geurts 214

Contributors 235

Index 239