Latin American Travelogues

Annotated Bibliography

Mia Waliszewski

Works Cited

Agosín, Marjorie and Julie H. Levison, eds. Magical Sites: Women Travelers in 19th Century Latin America. Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 1999.

This anthology contains a collection of original travelogues written mainly by European and American women traveling through various Latin American countries. Agosin and Levison include a section of background on each of the female writers but very little analysis.

Blanton, Casey. Travel Writing: The Self and the World. New York: Twayne, 1997.
Blanton traces the evolution of the travel narrative by analyzing specific travelogues from different time periods. He argues that the presence of the narrator in the travelogue has changed from nonexistent to the driving force of the plot. Blanton's section on the historical overview of travel writing gives a helpful description of the evolution of the relationship between the narrator and the world represented in the travelogue, while his section on nature travel writing contains a useful description of the theme of nature as sublime.

Cabañas, Miguel A. The Cultural 'Other' in Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives: How the United States and Latin America Described Each Other. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008.
Cabañas analyzes the construction of cultural differences, including the racialization of the Other, in nineteenth-century Latin American travel narratives. He presents a cross-cultural study of travel writing by comparing travelogues written by Americans in Latin America and Latin Americans in the United States. Cabañas is particularly informative on the subject of race, especially in the Agassizes travelogue A Journey in Brazil, the sublime in John Lloyd Stephens travel narrative, and the paradigm of conquest.

Clark, Steve, ed. Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit. New York: Zed Books, 1999.
Clark's anthology contains helpful articles on such topics as the discourse of cannibalism, in which Ted Motohashi argues that the cannibal label justified the oppression and extermination of native populations. In her article on gender in travelogues Wendy Mercer explores whether or not gender differences alter the conventions of travel writing.

Hahner, June E., ed. Women through Women's Eyes: Latin American Women in Nineteenth-Century Travel Accounts. Wilmington, DEL: Scholarly Resources, 1998.
This collection of selections from nineteenth-century travelogues offers accounts of how U.S. and European women viewed women of Latin America. Brief introductions contextualize each account. This work serves as a guidebook for those who want to then examine the full texts of these foreign observers of gender in Latin America.

Harvey, Bruce A. American Geographics: U.S. National Narratives and the Representation of the Non-European World, 1830-1865. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Harvey provides analysis of a wide variety of travelogues to argue that travelogues confirm U.S. national identities and enforce American cultural norms. His most relevant chapter examines two Latin American travelogues written by American archaeologists in order to expound on the many events and ideas that influence the two writers' perspectives, including the belief in the inferiority of certain people and cultures and the policy of expansionism.

Hulme, Peter and Tim Youngs, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, edited by Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
This anthology contains critical articles on travel writing organized by time period, geographic location, and subject. Neil Whitehead's article on South America, particularly the Amazon, contains useful information on how travel writers repeatedly reinvented the Amazon from a scientific object to a place unfavorable to the development of human culture to a land filled with exotic mystery. Susan Bassnett also explores whether travel writing is inherently gendered and the self-fictionalizing process in women's travel narratives.

Manzurul Islam, Syed. The Ethics of Travel: From Marco Polo to Kafka. New York: Manchester University Press, 1996.
Manzurul Islam contends that Marco Polo's travelogue acts as a machine of othering through a direct representation of differences between cultures. He argues that the other cannot be represented directly, only in relation to a set point.

McBride, Christopher Mark. The Colonizer Abroad: American Writers on Foreign Soil, 1846-1912. New York: Routledge, 2004.
McBride analyzes the writings of American authors after they had visited the islands of Cuba, Hawaii, and the Marquesas in order to develop his assertion that the authors are active participants in the American colonization of foreign lands. Although many of the travel narratives McBride explores are fictional accounts, he includes nonfiction travelogues, such as Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s To Cuba and Back: A Vacation Voyage (1859). McBride consigns a great deal of importance to using modern ideas, such as the role of the "other," to analyze travel accounts.

Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Pratt offers an excellent argument on the importance of the effect of scientific thought on the development of the genre of travel writing. She contends that Linnaeus' classificatory system provided a means to "reinvent" the world through a European, masculine perspective. Pratt also contends that the travel narratives produced by Europeans created an innocent version of European authority, which she calls the "anti-conquest." Pratt emphasizes as well the cross-cultural reinvention of Europe and its colonies.