Introduction to Quests, Journeys, and Travel in Literature

Foundations of the Literary Journey and Quest Narratives

• The literary journey is an ancient concept in storytelling, serving as a primary connection with literature throughout history.

• Literature is fundamentally built upon two core narratives:

  • A person (traditionally referred to as a man) going on a journey.

  • A stranger arriving in town.

• Some of the greatest literary works combine these two narrative structures into a single account.

Archetypal Examples of Quest Narratives

• Gilgamesh: One of the earliest examples of the search for immortality.

• The Odyssey: Centered on the character Odysseus (known as Ulysses in Roman versions) who is stranded away from home and spends the narrative attempting to return.

• The Biblical Story of Adam and Eve: This is considered a quest or journey narrative beginning with their expulsion from the Garden of Eden after eating from the Tree of Knowledge, forcing them to find a new path forward.

• A literary quest is defined not just by physical movement from one location to another, but by the gain of internal understanding about humanity and the self.

Erich Auerbach and the Concept of Mimesis

• Erich Auerbach was a Jewish scholar who published a seminal work of literary criticism in $1946$.

• He wrote this work largely from memory after leaving his home during World War II, without access to his original library or texts.

• Auerbach focused on the concept of mimesis, which is the Greek term for "imitation."

• Mimesis examines whether art is imitating or reflecting reality, akin to holding a mirror up to the world.

• Auerbach established a framework for studying journeys by contrasting two key narratives:

  • Luminous Mimesis (The Odyssey): In this reflection of the world, the character's motives are completely transparent. We understand why Odysseus thinks what he thinks, where he is going, and what he plans to do. He says and does exactly what he means.

  • Obscure or Hidden Mimesis (Abraham and Isaac): In the biblical account where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, the internal experience is hidden. While Abraham takes Isaac up the mountain and wrestles with the conflict between his love for his son and his obedience to God, his specific thoughts and motives are not explicitly stated in the text.

Characteristics of a Quest Narrative

• A quest follows an archetypal story structure, often referred to as the hero's journey.

• There are four standard requirements for a quest narrative:

  1. A Hero: The central figure who may be amazing or quite flawed.

  2. A Goal: A specific objective or something the hero wants to obtain.

  3. A Challenging Journey: The path to the goal must be difficult to achieve.

  4. Meaningful Transformation: By the end of the journey, the character and their situation have changed; they do not end the story in the same state they began.

Historical Catalog of Quest Texts

• Gilgamesh: An ancient Sumerian search for immortality.

• The Odyssey (Homer): A quest to return home and reclaim a kingdom.

• Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon epic featuring a hero who slays the giant Grendel and eventually a dragon; noted for its retelling by the poet Seamus Heaney.

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Features a bet where Gawain decapitates a knight who survived the blow and walked away; Gawain must then fulfill his end of the promise.

• The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas): A $550$-page nineteenth-century narrative of a man seeking revenge against those who wrongfully imprisoned him.

• Heart of Darkness ($1899$, Joseph Conrad): A novella ($105$ pages) about a man named Marlow traveling to the Belgian Congo on a steamship to find a man named Kurtz. It is considered an internal journey where very little external action occurs.

• The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien): Multiple quests featuring Frodo Baggins and the challenge of destroying a ring; it also includes the backstory of Bilbo Baggins.

• On the Road (Jack Kerouac): A product of the $1950$s Beat movement and counterculture, depicting road-tripping across America.

• The Reivers (William Faulkner): A Southern Gothic comedy that features a quest based on street smarts rather than noble virtue or physical courage.

• The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro): Features an aging butler taking a road trip through England.

• The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis): Stories involving journeys through a cabinet (wardrobe) into another world.

Three Modes of Transformation in Quests

• Geographical Transformation: A dramatic shift in location where the character enters unfamiliar, extreme, or uncanny environments.

• Ethical Transformation: A focus on the hero's values and moral beliefs. These beliefs are tested and revised over the course of the story, ensuring the hero does not end with the same moral perspective they started with.

• Existential Transformation: Centered on the hero's understanding of their own existence. This is often a completely internal journey where the character gains a changed understanding of who they are and their purpose on earth, even without leaving their physical location.

The Bildungsroman

• Bildungsroman is a term for a "coming-of-age" narrative.

• This genre typically combines geographical, ethical, and existential transformations as a young person leaves childhood (a metaphorical "place") and enters the world.

• Famous examples of the Bildungsroman include Les Misérables and Jane Eyre.

Categorization of Specific Literary Journeys

• Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe): A classic Bildungsroman where a young man is forced into the world and experiences geographical, ethical, and existential changes.

• Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain): Huck and Jim travel down the Mississippi River. It is geographical, but primarily ethical as Huck challenges his own racist assumptions through his relationship with Jim.

• What Did You Do During the Revolution Drama: A narrative involving a bureaucrat from a futuristic society sent undercover to a planet resembling medieval Earth; classified as a geographical quest.

• The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro): A butler named Stevens takes a motor trip through England to small-town communities. It is a mix of geographical (travel), ethical (re-evaluating dignity and his past), and existential (questioning what it means to be a great butler).

• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Geographical.

• Annihilation: Geographical (though some argue it is existential due to the questioning of what it means to be human/alive).

• The Underground Railroad: Geographical and existential.

• Creation Lake: Existential.

• Shogun: Ethical.

The Politics of Travel Writing

• Historically, travel writing was the primary way people encountered distant cultures before the existence of the internet or the telegraph.

• Guidebooks like The Wonders of England (or The Wonder of England) influenced how travelers perceived their destinations.

• Scholars Judith Palmer and Alfred Bendixen identify two modes of travel writing:

  1. Autobiographical Project: Using a journey to understand the self and the present (e.g., Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, where he lived in Concord, Massachusetts for $2$ years, $2$ months, and $2$ days to practice subsistence farming).

  2. External Record: Documentation dedicated to specific details of a place or society to share knowledge with others.

• Constitutive vs. Mimetic Writing: Palmer and Bendixen argue that travel writing is often constitutive, meaning it actively creates the reality and the subject it describes rather than merely mirroring (mimesis) what exists.

• Edward Said's Orientalism ($1978$): Argues that Western writing historically portrayed Eastern (Oriental) cultures as disordered, exotic, false, and reduced to tropes (e.g., people in tiger skins and turbans with genie lamps).

• Mary Louise Pratt: Introduced the concept of "contact zones," which are social spaces where different cultures meet and clash, often involving power differentials.

Biography of Kazuo Ishiguro

• Early Life and Heritage: Born in $1954$ in Nagasaki, Japan. His father was an oceanographer and his mother survived the bombing of Nagasaki. The family moved to Surrey, United Kingdom when he was $6$ years old ($1960$).

• Cultural Duality: The family expected to return to Japan, so they spoke Japanese at home and maintained Japanese ideals while Ishiguro attended British schools, creating an immigrant duality.

• Early Ambitions: He was deeply inspired by singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen; his initial dream was to be a songwriter rather than a novelist.

• Education and Career Shift: Graduated from the University of Kent in $1978$. In $1979$, he shifted focus to fiction, entering a creative writing program at the University of East Anglia where he worked with Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter.

• Major Literary Works:

  • A Pale View of Hills ($1982$): Focuses on a Japanese widow in England recalling Nagasaki.

  • An Artist of the Floating World ($1986$).

  • The Remains of the Day ($1989$): Won the prestigious Booker Prize and brought him national fame.

  • Never Let Me Go ($2005$): A dystopian novel set in a UK boarding school.

• Nobel Prize: Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in $2017$ for his entire body of work. The committee cited his "novels of great emotional force" that uncover the "abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world."

Questions & Discussion

• Question: What occurs in Beowulf?

• Response: Beowulf involves a hero swimming and eventually slaying a giant (Grendel) that was terrorizing Vikings because they were partying too loudly. He also eventually slays a dragon.

• Question: Is The Road (by Cormac McCarthy) the same as Jack Kerouac's On the Road?

• Response: No, The Road is a dystopian novel set in the future, whereas On the Road is about $1950$s road-tripping.

• Question: What is an example of unethical behavior in travel writing?

• Response: If a traveler went to a foreign planet that was rich in resources and returned to report that it was barren and devoid of resources in order to keep the wealth for themselves, they would be unethically using writing to "constitute" a false reality.

• Question: Is the categorization of Annihilation as purely geographical correct?

• Response: While the resource guide classifies it as geographical, it can be argued as existential because the protagonist questions the definition of being human and what it means to be alive as she encounters new species.