Microtravel : confinement, deceleration, microspection / edited by Charles Forsdick, Zoe Kinsley and Kathryn Walchester.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Forsdick, Charles, editor.

Kinsley, Zoë, 1977- editor.

Walchester, Kathryn, editor.

Series:

Anthem studies in travel.

[Anthem studies in travel]

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Travel in literature.

Travelers' writings--History and criticism.

Travelers' writings.

Travel--Philosophy.

Travel.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 234 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York, NY : Anthem Press,, 2024.

Summary:

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic imposed immobility on large sectors of the world's population, with confinement becoming for several years an everyday reality. The lives of those who previously enjoyed the privileges of being 'fast castes' ground to a halt, while at the same time the displacement of more vulnerable populations along well-established migration corridors has been radically reduced. The result has been a recalibration of the scale of journeying, with travellers slowing down and readjusting their relationship to the proximate and nearby. This situation has provided an opportunity for those who study travel and travel writing to rethink their object of study. This volume explores and historicizes the phenomenon of 'microtravel', designating slower journeys within a limited radius which allow, and sometimes necessitate, new forms of experiencing the world.<br><br>The contributors reveal how these practices are far from new and are indeed evident across numerous examples of journey narratives from earlier periods. The volume considers a diverse range of forms, including fictional texts. It also includes ficto-critical writing, allowing a fuller exploration of new approaches to microtravel in the twenty-first century. Sometimes deceleration is reduced to immobility, with the traditional horizontal axis of travel replaced by a burrowing down into time, place and space.

Contents:

Cover

Half-Title

Title

Copyright

Contents

Notes on Contributors

Microtravel: An Introduction

Section 1. Confinement and Immobility

Chapter 1. How to Travel in Monastic Confinement: An Imaginary Journey to the New World

Chapter 2. The Nile, Immortality and the Body in Lucy Duff Gordon’s Letters From Egypt

Chapter 3. A Slow Boat to Indochina: Immobility and Micro-movements on the Road to Indochina

Chapter 4. No Going Back: Interrupted Journeys and Identity Crisis in Marie Ndiaye

Section 2. Deceleration and Pedestrianism

Chapter 5. Friedrich Engels Travels in a Chimney

Chapter 6. ‘I Wanted to Think, Write, Stay or Move on at My Own Speed and Unencumbered’: Pedestrian Rites of Passage in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts

Chapter 7. ‘Foot foundered and broken down’: Painful Pedestrianism in John Clare’s ‘Journey out of Essex’

Section 3. Palimpsestic Travel

Chapter 8. Elegy for the Living: Travels in Guyana with Michael Swan and Wilson Harris

Chapter 9. Back to Base: Palimpsest Travel in the Black Country Geopark

Chapter 10. Observed and Reflected: Women Tourists, Microtravel and Souvenirs, 1750–1830

Section 4. Microspection and Microsound

Chapter 11. ‘This Is a Place Where We Should Like to Have Lived’: The Garden As ‘Dwelling Place’ in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Travel Writing

Chapter 12. In a Sound World: On Microaudition As a Mode of Microtravel

Chapter 13. ‘The echo of great spaces traversed’: Microaudition and Vertical Travel in In Search of Lost Time

Index Generated by AI.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 13 Jun 2025).

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

1-83998-660-3

1-83998-659-X

OCLC:

1433225865