01 CAC MTH1 22800 DATTA MU-204
It is now commonplace to acknowledge the eighteenth century as a moment where our modern sense of the “global” takes shape. Through the course, we will track how British travel literature produced a taste for commodities like coffee and sugar, shaped scientific knowledge about things like nature and weather, and helped form institutions like museums, stock markets, and insurance companies. We shall read varied forms of writing — poetry, fiction, and travelogues with a particular interest in literary description. Description has often been relegated to the background of literary texts as an accumulation of useless and excessive details that slow the pace of the narrative. But can we always tell apart foreground from background? How does description, particularly in travel writing, decide what objects claim our attention and which remain invisible?
Over the semester, we will try to think of travel writing’s construction of novelty and wonder in the light of these questions. We shall also hold these ideas in tension with the awareness of the forced movement of people by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and enforced “travel”. The course shall include writings from various spaces, with authors like Richard Ligon (Barbados), Aphra Behn (Surinam), William Chambers (China), Mary Montagu (Turkey), Briton Hammon (Florida, Cuba), Laurence Sterne (France), Mary Wollstonecraft (Sweden, Denmark). Writing assignments will range from short and informal contributions to a class blog to longer and more formal essays, including a take-home final exam. Participation in discussion is expected from all students.