Narratives of Cyprus Modern Travel Writing and Cultural Encounters since Lawrence Durrell

by Bowman, Jim

• ISBN13: 9781848859180
• ISBN10: 184885918X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-12-12
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

Unease has marked relations between modern travel writers and the people of Cyprus. Visitors like Lawrence Durrell, Colin Thubron, Christopher Hitchens and Sebastian Junger have registered the effects of political strife on both the people of the island and those who visit from abroad. Their accounts demonstrate how geopolitical realities-such as colonization, insurgency, inter-communal warfare, and now decades of militarized 'peace'-shape the narrating self and its relations to others. Here, Jim Bowman assesses the effects of Cypriot history on writings about the island through an analysis of memoirs, travelogues, political journalism, guide books and ethnographies. Through this examination of popular texts, Bowman shows how a western and politicized image of Cyprus has been created, increasingly divorced from the realities experienced by the local population. Narratives of Cyprus is an important reassessment of Cyprus' place in British culture, and will be of interest to scholars and students of Anthropology, English Literature and Ethnographic Studies.

Author Biography

Jim Bowman is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, USA. He co-edited the travel writing anthology Encounters with the Middle East and researches and teaches about writing, rhetoric and the politics and cultures of Middle Eastern societies.

Table of Contents

1. The Cultural Stage for Stories of Conflict: Narrated Travel Writing in Modern Cyprus
2. Contemporary Critical Perspectives on Travel Writing and Cultural Encounter
3. Fashioned for Story's Sake: Lawrence Durrell's Bitter Lemons and the Turks of Cyprus
4. Narrating from an Intimate Distance: Turk Troping on Colin Thubron's Journey into Cyprus
5. Day-Tripping to the Dark Side: the Ethics of Narrating an Island Divided
6. Toward an Ethics of Encounter for Travel and Travel Writing