German Literary Travelogues Around the Turn of the Century, 1890-1914
Bogosavljevic, Srdan
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/71044
Description
Title
German Literary Travelogues Around the Turn of the Century, 1890-1914
Author(s)
Bogosavljevic, Srdan
Issue Date
1983
Department of Study
German
Discipline
German
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, Germanic
Abstract
The development of non-fictional travel literature (the literary travelogue) at the turn of the century (1890-1914) shows a cyclical pattern. After a short-lived revival of interest from 1890 to 1892, resulting from the emergence of Impressionism, the younger generation of writers did not practice the genre until after 1900. Why this break in development should have occurred is one of the questions addressed in the present thesis. The discussion focuses on the rapid cultural and social changes of the period in order to determine which might or might not have been favorable to the development of the genre in general.
The introduction defines the genre as an aesthetically integrated re-creation of the experience of a journey, the structure of which is basically non-fictional. The discussion of Josef Viktor Widmann's travel books in Chapter I serves as a contrast to the travel literature of the period 1890-1914, which was characterized in the main by the loss of most traditional values, alienation from reality, and defunctionalization of travel. Chapter II treats these phenomena as determinants of the genre's development and structure around 1900. Chapter III analyzes fourteen travelogues divided into four groups: "Impressions and Anecdotes," "Cultural Analyses," "Pilgrimages," and "Landscapes." The discussion of the first two groups concentrates on the progression of travel literature from isolated aestheticism in the 1890's to extraversion and eventual commercialization after 1900. Chapter IV shows that literary trends exercised a decisive influence on the development and form of the genre. Chapter V examines sociological factors such as urbanization, technology, mass travel, and expansion of the book market, but its main goal is to demonstrate how the progressive decay of liberal ideology with the attendant collective flight of the educated classes into Innerlichkeit contributed to the crisis of the genre and how the renaissance of the travelogue after ca. 1903 was caused in part by the attempt of the same classes to integrate themselves into the mainstream of German society through a growing enthusiasm for imperialistic expansion.
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