Feminism and the Politics of Travel after the Enlightenment

Yaël Schlick is associate adjunct professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario where she teaches courses on travel writing, autobiography, and modern literature. She has published articles on nineteenth-century French and British travel writing and colonial literature, and on 20th century autobiographical narratives. She has recently co-edited a volume of essays on the figure of the coquette with Shelley King. Her translation and critical edition of Victor Segalen’s Essay on Exoticism was published in 2002.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Travel, Knowledge, UtopiaPart I: Travel and DomesticityChapter 1: The Sex of Travel: Sexual Contract and Enlightenment Travel in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary WollstonecraftChapter 2: Travel and Talent: The Culture of Domesticity in Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis, Germaine de Staël and Frances BurneyPart II: Travel and New CommunitiesChapter 3: Travelling Theories and Political Formation: The Feminist Peregrinations of Flora TristanChapter 4: Travel as Praxis: Suzanne Voilquin and the Saint-Simonian ‘Call to the Woman’ Part III: Travel and HistoryChapter 5: Spatial Literacy and the Female Traveller: The Politics of Map-Reading in Gustave Flaubert and George SandEpilogue: Moving Forward BibliographyAbout the Author

Schlick (Queen's Univ., Ontario, Canada) presents an intriguing examination of how notions of gender and perceptions of the value of travel interrelate in writing from the late 18th through the 19th centuries. In a somewhat unexpected move, the author treats selections from traditional, nonfiction travel writing as well as literary fiction with travel as a theme. Readers will find Schlick's exploration theoretically well grounded....Most broadly useful are the introduction ("Travel, Knowledge, Utopia"), chapter 1 ("The Sex of Travel: Sexual Contract and Enlightenment Travel in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft"), and the epilogue ("Moving Forward"). These sections of the book provide a solid critical framework for advanced scholars interested in the historical notions of travel as a public, political, tough male activity as opposed to home as a private, domestic, soft female activity. . . .Summing Up: Recommended.