East and West in Aldous Huxley’s Travel Writings

Writing has always been, inter alia, an effective means of manipulation or, at least, of forming opinions. Travel writing is one form of writing by means of which authors relate their impressions about places and people they visited, about societies and cultures they encountered; some of them, if...

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Main Author: Daniela Nadia MACOVEI
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Casa Cărții de Știință 2014-10-01
Series:Cultural Intertexts
Subjects:
Online Access:https://b00e8ea91c.clvaw-cdnwnd.com/4fb470e8cbb34a32a0dc1701f8d7322d/200000232-b80d0b80d2/68-83%20Macovei%20-%20East%20and%20West%20in%20Aldous%20Huxley%E2%80%99s%20Travel%20Writings.pdf
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author Daniela Nadia MACOVEI
author_facet Daniela Nadia MACOVEI
author_sort Daniela Nadia MACOVEI
collection DOAJ
description Writing has always been, inter alia, an effective means of manipulation or, at least, of forming opinions. Travel writing is one form of writing by means of which authors relate their impressions about places and people they visited, about societies and cultures they encountered; some of them, if not all, also create certain images and strong opinions in the minds of the readers about the things they read of, all the more so if the readers have never had the chance to visit the places themselves. We are all, therefore, subject to influence, we are the product of what we read and, generally, of the things and ways we are taught. The present article will try to explore Aldous Huxley’s travel writing in order to understand how much of it is fiction, and how much are the writer’s real subjective impressions and opinions, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the fiction part will be scrutinized in order to identify clichés, i.e. ’the rhetorical figures one keeps encountering in [...] descriptions of the ‘’mysterious East’’, as well as the stereotypes about the African (or Indian or Irish or Jamaican or Chinese) mind’, as Edward Said (1994: xi) so rightfully puts it. At the same time, one is to be aware of the fact that, even if Huxley’s travel writing is, to some extent, subject to such stereotyped thinking, he nevertheless alters to some degree both this typical thinking and the reality itself through his subjective perceptions (which continuously modified themselves all along his life and career) - a reason why his travel writing is congenially different from one stage to another.
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spelling doaj.art-70d26e3aba74413cbb0e96ce35db365f2022-12-22T04:29:38ZengCasa Cărții de ȘtiințăCultural Intertexts2393-06242393-10782014-10-0116883East and West in Aldous Huxley’s Travel Writings Daniela Nadia MACOVEI0Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, RomaniaWriting has always been, inter alia, an effective means of manipulation or, at least, of forming opinions. Travel writing is one form of writing by means of which authors relate their impressions about places and people they visited, about societies and cultures they encountered; some of them, if not all, also create certain images and strong opinions in the minds of the readers about the things they read of, all the more so if the readers have never had the chance to visit the places themselves. We are all, therefore, subject to influence, we are the product of what we read and, generally, of the things and ways we are taught. The present article will try to explore Aldous Huxley’s travel writing in order to understand how much of it is fiction, and how much are the writer’s real subjective impressions and opinions, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the fiction part will be scrutinized in order to identify clichés, i.e. ’the rhetorical figures one keeps encountering in [...] descriptions of the ‘’mysterious East’’, as well as the stereotypes about the African (or Indian or Irish or Jamaican or Chinese) mind’, as Edward Said (1994: xi) so rightfully puts it. At the same time, one is to be aware of the fact that, even if Huxley’s travel writing is, to some extent, subject to such stereotyped thinking, he nevertheless alters to some degree both this typical thinking and the reality itself through his subjective perceptions (which continuously modified themselves all along his life and career) - a reason why his travel writing is congenially different from one stage to another. https://b00e8ea91c.clvaw-cdnwnd.com/4fb470e8cbb34a32a0dc1701f8d7322d/200000232-b80d0b80d2/68-83%20Macovei%20-%20East%20and%20West%20in%20Aldous%20Huxley%E2%80%99s%20Travel%20Writings.pdftraveloguestereotypecultureauthoritypowerimperialismmodernism
spellingShingle Daniela Nadia MACOVEI
East and West in Aldous Huxley’s Travel Writings
Cultural Intertexts
travelogue
stereotype
culture
authority
power
imperialism
modernism
title East and West in Aldous Huxley’s Travel Writings
title_full East and West in Aldous Huxley’s Travel Writings
title_fullStr East and West in Aldous Huxley’s Travel Writings
title_full_unstemmed East and West in Aldous Huxley’s Travel Writings
title_short East and West in Aldous Huxley’s Travel Writings
title_sort east and west in aldous huxley s travel writings
topic travelogue
stereotype
culture
authority
power
imperialism
modernism
url https://b00e8ea91c.clvaw-cdnwnd.com/4fb470e8cbb34a32a0dc1701f8d7322d/200000232-b80d0b80d2/68-83%20Macovei%20-%20East%20and%20West%20in%20Aldous%20Huxley%E2%80%99s%20Travel%20Writings.pdf
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