Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Chatwin, Bruce'

Wonderer is a screenplay about the life of writer/traveler Bruce Chatwin. The screenplay examines not only Chatwin's travels and writing, but also the landscape which he never fully explored: his inner-world. This reflective analysis will focus on the relationship between Bruce Chatwin's writing - especially in The Songlines- and the ways in which the book's subject matter and style influenced the choices in content and form which I made in writing Wonderer.

Complexe, hétéroclite, mêlant autobiographie, récit de voyage, et roman, l'œuvre de Bruce Chatwin (1940-89) est difficilement classable. Mais elle trouve sa cohérence dans la théorie chatwinienne selon laquelle l'homme est "naturellement nomade", l'histoire de la civilisation un conflit immuable entre nomadisme et sédentarité. La théorie s’articule au fil des livres autour d'une dialectique entre « dépaysement » et « ressourcement », avec d'une part les thèmes récurrents de l'exil, du voyage-guérison, de la fuite de l'histoire, et de l'autre ceux de l'enracinement, du voyage-quête et du retour aux sources. Or, cette dialectique constitue la véritable dynamique de l'œuvre. Elle reflète le débat jamais résolu chez Chatwin entre l'ascète et l'esthète, l'errant et l'intellectuel, le voyageur et le chercheur. Dans les derniers récits, elle s'oriente vers une exploration de l'alchimie entre écriture et voyage, création et réalité, et l'éternelle dualité entre état et devenir<br>Complex, heteroclite, a mixture of autobiography, travel-writing, and novel, the work of Bruce Chatwin (1940-89) is hard to classify. It derives its coherence from the author's theory that man is a born nomad, and the history of civilization an unending conflict between nomadism and settlement. Over successive narratives, the theory is structured around a dialectic between 'disorientation' and 'renewal', with on the hand the recurrent themes of exile, of the journey-as -curative, and the retreat from history, and on the other those of rootedness, of the journey-as-quest, and the return to origins, this dialectic constitutes the real dynamic of Chatwin's work. It reflects the unresolved debate between the ascetic and the aesthete, the wanderer and the intellectual, the traveller and the researcher within him. With the last books, it opens out into an exploration of the alchemy between writing and travel, creation and reality, and the eternal duality between being and becoming

This thesis is centrally concerned with the theme of restlessness within the work of the British author Bruce Chatwin. Critical interpretation of Chatwin’s work has tended to focus on the generic and political status of the five full-length works he produced during his lifetime, exploring the theoretical implications of the author’s formal approach. This concentration on the structural and ideological elements of Chatwin’s creative output has resulted in the substantive thematic material of the works being somewhat overlooked. The following analysis intends to redress this balance, focussing specifically on the creative representation of the key theme of restlessness within Chatwin’s body of work. This thesis will explore the topic of restlessness through an analysis of both the author’s published work and the embargoed archive of Chatwin’s notebooks, diaries and manuscripts that resides in the Bodleian Library, the majority of which has never before been made available to critical scrutiny. Drawing on this important and previously unstudied archive, which includes the manuscript of Chatwin’s first unpublished work, known as “The Nomadic Alternative”, the following thesis will examine the origins and development of the theme of restlessness, which can be seen as Chatwin’s chief literary preoccupation; a condition that he perceived as endemic to the human species, and which he argued crucially influenced both the individual possibility of discovering satisfaction in one’s life and the wider likelihood of attaining social harmony. Tracing Chatwin’s interest in the subject from its earliest literary manifestation in “The Nomadic Alternative”, this thesis intends to document the development of the author’s consistent engagement with the notion of restlessness, examining both his literary representation of the affliction as well as presenting an analysis of his theory of human movement.

En aquest estudi examino dos elements innovadors en l'estil narratiu de Bruce Chatwin. El primer correspon a la seva aproximació antropològica a la literatura, el segon correspon a la seva nova manera d'abordar la percepció visual. Pel que fa al primer element, el meu argument és que els conceptes de liminalitat i communitas són els eixos centrals de la seva poètica, fet que atorga a la seva obra unitat ideològica i coherència temàtica. La meva premissa fonamental és que a través dels seus cronotops i personatges liminals confereix tota una nova dimensió de veritat a la narració. A més, la liminalitat el permet construir una nova representació de subjectivitat basada en la naturalesa metamòrfica de l'home per una banda i en la inclusió i ficcionalització de les obsessions personals en el procés de creació literària per l'altra. Finalment, la liminalitat el permet reconèixer la dualitat humana -amb tot el dolor que aquest reconeixement implica-i que ell transmet amb un to compassiu i alhora irònic. Mitjançant el concepte de communitas Chatwin legitima en part la seva manca de compromís polític i justifica la seva actitud envers Englishness, nacionalitat i universalisme. Communitas també dóna sentit a la seva creença en la fusió de forma i contingut en narrativa. Pel que fa al segon element, Chatwin mostra una manera peculiar de veure el món basada en una cerca de tot allò que és estrany, misteriós i extraordinari. També vol captar la subjectivitat sense intervenir: l'autor és un testimoni més que un intrús. La visualització de Chatwin genera un estil del "no passa res" per una banda, i defuig la posa, els simulacres i les vistes panoràmiques per l'altra. A més l'autor dóna prioritat a l'asimetria a fi d'eludir coartacions en la forma i refermar la seva idea que la realitat/l'home s'està fent constantment. La seva visió és democràtica, fruit d'una percepció policèntrica de la realitat i del respecte per les múltiples identitats dins l'individu: Chatwin insta a "veure-les" i a reconèixer-les totes. <br/>El meu estudi també analitza el paper pioner de Chatwin en la literatura de viatges moderna. L'autor qüestiona i subverteix la forma i el contingut del gènere i forneix els relats de viatges amb una nova taxonomia. El viatger es veu immers en una nova geografia de l'aventura en la qual la cerca ja no és de reportatge, triomf o autodescobriment sinó que és una recerca estètica. <br/>La meva tesi també conclou que la seva manera tan personal de percebre la realitat a casa i a fora de casa va fer que Chatwin percebés la seva pròpia realitat d'una manera diferent: es va definir a sí mateix mitjançant una forma de subjectivitat no-convencional i així va crear una representació d'identitat i veritat diferent de la que s'espera trobar en relats autobiogràfics.<br>This study examines two innovative elements of Bruce Chatwin's narrative style. The first corresponds to his anthropological approach to writing, the second is his new mode of visual perception. As to the first, I argue that the concepts of liminality and communitas are the central axes of his poetics, thus conferring ideological wholeness and thematic coherence on his work. My underlying premise is that through his liminal chronotopes and personae he adds a whole new dimension of truth to storytelling. Besides liminality enables him to construct a new representation of subjectivity based on the metamorphosing nature of man on the one hand and on the inclusion and fictionalisation of personal obsessions in the process of literary creation on the other. Finally, liminality enables him to acknowledge human duality (with the pain that such recognition means) and in turn transfer this recognition in a both humorous and compassionate mood. Through the concept of communitas Chatwin partly faces his non¬committal political agenda while finding an identifiable way to justify his stance towards Englishness, nationality and universalism. Communitas also gives meaning to his belief in the fusion of form and content within storytelling. As to the second, Chatwin's way of seeing based on a search for both the uncanny and the miraculous determines his style of the uneventfulness on the one hand, and leads him to avoid simulacra, pose and panoramic visions on the other. My findings reveal that he foregrounds asymmetry in order to replace constraint in form and justify his belief in reality/man being constantly in the making. His is a democratic visualisation, born out of both a polycentric perception of reality and the respect for the multiple identities within the individual: Chatwin urges the need to "see" and acknowledge them all. <br/>This study also assesses Chatwin's pioneering role in modern travel literature. The writer questions and subverts the form and the content of the genre and provides travel writing with a new taxonomy. The figure of the traveller becomes involved in a new geography of adventure in which the quest is no longer a search of reportage, victory or self-discovery but an aesthetic search in which the landscapes are created first in the imagination. <br/>Finally, my study also concludes that Chatwin's particular way of perceiving reality both abroad and at home made him perceive his own reality in a different way: he defined himself through an unconventional kind of subjectivity, thus creating a representation of identity and truth other than the one expected in autobiographical accounts.

This dissertation studies the works of four writers who attempt cross-cultural advocacy through writing fiction based upon their fieldwork or other travels. In order to explain cultural differences, however, all four writers inadvertently rely upon the very Orientalist stereotypes, the "ethnographic fictions," which they seek to undermine. Three underlying causes for this dynamic are identified and traced through works by the authors as well as contemporary post-colonial, queer, feminist, and ethnographic interdisciplinary scholarship. First, in order to explain the significance of native cultures in the language of the mainstream or dominant one, cross-cultural advocates must balance novelty with intelligibility. A critique of an epistemology of empire, then, better taps "ethnographic fictions" through mimicry, mockery, and minstrelsy, rather than appealing to abstract, ahistorical universals. Second, Odysseun myths remain a powerful set of presumptions about the relationship between travel, individuality, and empowerment. Yet the idea that freedom and free thought are both the goals and consequences of travel fails to account for the history of pilgrims, refugees, and community-based activists. Third, Orientalism and Anthropology are organized around the idea that sex/gender roles reveal the essence of indigenous cultures. The result is a disproportionate focus upon women's living quarters (harems, zezanas, huts), and indigenous sexuality (berdaches, hijras, shamen). For the four authors, the relationship between advocacy and self-identification is a crucial element. Close reading of the writers' texts reveals how they each seek validation of their sex/gender identities through investigations abroad. As queer, feminist, and/or bi-cultural people, the writers are particularly sensitive to conventions of belonging and exclusion. This study reveals how advocacy and alienation interact in 20th-century literature and scholarship of the Other.

Ces recherches se focalisent sur les représentations des nomades et leur évolution. Dès la Grèce ancienne une appréhension déterminée des nomades prend forme autour du pastoralisme et de l’habitat mobile, tout en incorporant d’autres éléments (le rapport à la guerre, à la sagesse, à la barbarie, à l’espace, à la politique…). Une histoire et une tradition commencent ainsi un cheminement millénaire qui trouvera son apogée dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, en particulier grâce aux textes de Chatwin, Moravia, Le Clézio, Duvignaud, Deleuze et Guattari<br>This research focuses on the representations of nomads and their evolution. Since ancient Greece a specific apprehension of the nomads has hinged on pastoralism and mobile dwelling, incorporating other elements (the relation with war, wisdom, barbary, space, politics...). A history and a tradition start, a long progress that will find its height during the second half of the XXth century, particularly through the texts of Chatwin, Moravia, Le Clézio, Duvignaud, Deleuze and Guattari

碩士<br>國立暨南國際大學<br>外國語文學系<br>96<br>This thesis is intended to study the various contradictions and ambiguities of In Patagonia and to question its potential advocacy for becoming the nomad. To demonstrate the ambiguities and contradiction of In Patagonia, I analyze the text’s ambivalent contestation between universalism and little narratives, modernism and postmodernism and interrogate the narrator’s representation of the minority. First, this thesis takes its departure from the narrator’s romantic universalization of human restlessness and the allegorical conflict of Abel and Cain as a metaphor of nomads and settlers. Second, this thesis analyzes the text’s postmodernist textual characteristics as a strategy for self-mockery and a critique of western literary or metaphysical traditions. Finally, this thesis studies the text’s revision of previous exploratory and colonial texts about Patagonian indigenous inhabitants and argues that in doing so the text implicitly subverts the hierarchy between the European explorers or colonizers and the Patagonian indigenous. Even though the narrator is prone to be critiqued as living in the imperial imagination of the restless desert nomad whose image is still inscribed within the European intellectual’s text from Noble Savage to the vanishing Indians, his concern for the nomadic way of life does offer a space for putting western modernity into question.

This thesis looks at two travel books by Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia (1977) and The Songlines (1987). Both occupy an ambiguous generic ground between fiction and non-fiction, yet critics have tended to oversimplify this key issue when discussing Chatwin's work. Responses to Chatwin's narratives have been unproductively polarized: some critics sweepingly accuse the author of "lying"; others over-intellectualize Chatwin's narrative strategies and celebrate the artistic achievement of his boundary-crossing "fictions." These two perspectives unsatisfactorily limit the debate about Chatwin's lies, and about travel writing generally. This thesis takes a middle ground, refusing the premise that Chatwin is a neo-colonial liar, and the proposition that he is an artist fictionalizing his experience to better express its complex truth. By attempting to understand Chatwin's lying/fictions more broadly, the thesis reads Chatwin's two major tracts closely - The Songlines in Chapter One and In Patagonia in Chapter Two - with an eye for narrative techniques and the author's preoccupations. Drawing on the biographical work of Nicholas Shakespeare, Susannah Clapp, and Nicholas Murray, travel literature theory and criticism, autobiography theory, ethnography, historiography, interviews, and memoirs, this thesis demonstrates that a single theoretical perspective cannot account for Chatwin's lies, but that a different kind of reading strategy will do so. Successive questions ask: What does Chatwin's lying consist of? What motivates those lies? What are the implications of his lies? This mode of critical reading acknowledges the problematics of lying within a non-fictional framework; it also elucidates the way Chatwin's fictionalizing contributes to a larger narrative design. The thesis concludes by addressing Chatwin's belated position in the history of European travel writing. A balanced critical approach, that seeks and interrogates the motivations underpinning Chatwin's lies, reveals him to be unwilling to move beyond a neo-colonialist practice of imposing fantasies upon foreign cultures. Unlike other belated travellers, Chatwin, through his self-representation as well as his representations of other characters and places, claims possession of his experience by exuberantly heightening its features. To a large extent Chatwin does not conceal his pleasure in fictionalizing, but rather displays a Camp delight in excess. Ultimately, however, Chatwin's overt playfulness cannot disguise his desire to conform characters to a naive fantasy of finding freedom elsewhere.