Travel and Material Culture: Commodity, Currency, and Destabilised Meaning in Women's Home Tour Writing.
This study explores the influence of material culture on patterns of identity construction within eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century home tour travel writing by women. Considering the ways in which material goods were used to promote and maintain travellers' own identities, and to position the...
| Published in: | Studies in Travel Writing Vol. 10; no. 2; pp. 101 - 123 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Sep2006
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=22588031&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 22588031 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 13645145 24SG jtl: Studies in Travel Writing issn: 13645145 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Sep2006 vid: 10 iid: 2 pid: 337 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 22588031 10.1080/13645145.2006.9634807 ppf: 101 ppct: 22 formats: tig: atl: Travel and Material Culture: Commodity, Currency, and Destabilised Meaning in Women's Home Tour Writing. aug: au: Kinsley, Zoë su: Material culture Identity (Psychology) Travel writing Travel writers Women authors Travel United Kingdom sug: subj: United Kingdom Material culture Identity (Psychology) Travel writing Travel writers Women authors Travel ab: This study explores the influence of material culture on patterns of identity construction within eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century home tour travel writing by women. Considering the ways in which material goods were used to promote and maintain travellers' own identities, and to position the peoples encountered in the spaces of travel, it is nevertheless argued that they frequently complicate and challenge, rather than reinforce, definitive social and cultural hierarchies. The fact that travellers in Britain engage with material culture in much the same way as those abroad -- as is evidenced in the discursive similarity between the home tour narratives considered here and the colonial travel texts produced in a later period -- raises important questions for the way in which we consider the notion of 'foreignness' in relation to travel in this period. Likewise, the examples here challenge traditional views of eighteenth-century women's role in material culture as merely one of consumption, as opposed to the more positive and creative masculine act of production. The shifting meanings of objects in women's home tour travel narratives engender a positive critique of commonly held assumptions regarding the ways in which we read gender, class, national and regional difference through the material. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2006 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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