Travel writing helps travel writers to redefine their identity and to revise their concept of home as well as to determine its relative position in the world when using it as a frame of reference. In "Wanderlust: A Love Affaire with Five Continents", Elisabeth Eaves, both author and protagonist, renegotiates these two concepts – home and identity – in her inner journey of self-exploration.
Making use of a qualitative and explorative approach, this paper investigates the question of how the search for identity and belonging is fashioned in the book.
First, the theoretical part of the paper relates the concepts of home and identity to infer how home can function as a source of identity. These theoretical frameworks are then applied in the subsequent section to assess the manner and success of Elisabeth's strategies of identity construction providing an answer to the question whether her mobile lifestyle as a modern nomad leads to homelessness and lack of identity. Finally, the analysis section breaks down the narrative techniques Elisabeth uses to secure her public identity as travel writer and relates them to the construction of her personal identity.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction: toward a definition of the modern travel book
2 Home and Identity in Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents
2.1 Relating Home and Identity
2.1.1 Constructing Identity in an increasingly mobile world
2.1.2 Home as Identity
2.1.2.1 Home as a place
2.1.2.2 Home as being-with-others
2.2 Elisabeth’s search for home and identity
2.2.1 Establishing multiple place-based identities
2.2.2 Establishing romantic home-relations
2.3 Homelessness as a result of Elisabeth’s search for home
3 Textual strategies for securing identity
3.1 Elisabeth’s strategies of subjectification
3.1.1 Projecting difference onto the tourist
3.1.2 Projecting difference onto the local
3.2 Elisabeth’s strategies of subjection
3.2.1 Establishing an authentic traveler
3.2.2 Establishing a masculine traveler
4 Conclusion
5 Works cited
5.1 Primary Literature
5.2 Secondary Literature
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