The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790–1876This book is the first to engage with the full range of American travel writing about nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine, and the first to acknowledge the influence of the late-eighteenth-century Barbary captivity narrative on nineteenth-century travel writing about the Middle East. Brian Yothers argues that American travel writing about the Holy Land forms a coherent, if greatly varied, tradition, which can only be fully understood when works by major writers such as Twain and Melville are studied alongside missionary accounts, captivity narratives, chronicles of religious pilgrimages, and travel writing in the genteel tradition. Yothers also examines works by lesser-known authors such as Bayard Taylor, John Lloyd Stephens, and Clorinda Minor, demonstrating that American travel writing is marked by a profound intertextuality with the Hebrew and Christian scriptures and with British and continental travel narratives about the Holy Land. His concluding chapter on Melville's Clarel shows how Melville's poem provides an incisive critique of the nascent imperial discourse discernible in the American texts with which it is in dialogue. |
Contents
The Skeptical Piety of Protestant Pilgrims | |
Clorinda Minor Orson Hyde Warder | |
The Skeptical Oriental Romance of John | |
Mark Twain J Ross Browne John | |
The Double Mystery of Place | |
Other editions - View all
The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790–1876 Brian Yothers Limited preview - 2016 |
The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790-1876 Brian Yothers Limited preview - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
Algerine Captive American Holy Land American Protestant American travel writing appears argues authenticity Barclay Bayard Taylor Bible Browne Bryant Catholic and Orthodox century characters Christ Christian Church Clarel contemporary convert Cresson criticism critique culture Curtis Curtis’s Dead Sea DeForest describes devotes discussion Dorr Dorr’s evangelical experience faith George William Curtis Goldman Herman Melville Holy Land narratives Holy Land travel Holy Land writing Holy Sepulcher Hyde identified inhabitants Innocents Abroad interpretation Islam Jerusalem Jewish John Lloyd Stephens John William DeForest journey landscape of Palestine Levant literary travelers Mark Twain Melville’s Melville’s Clarel Millerite Mortmain Muslim narrator Nehemiah nineteenthcentury American nonProtestant Obenzinger observes Odenheimer Orson Hyde palm particularly passage persona pilgrimage poem Prime provides readers reading religion religious response Robinson and Thomson sacred landscape sacred sites scriptures significant skepticism slave specific spiritual Stephens’s Thomson and Robinson tradition travel narratives trope Tyler’s novel Underhill Ungar William William Henry Odenheimer women