Language as escape: the literature of the American Western tour, 1830-1890

Abstract

En este trabajo nos proponemos examinar los diarios de tres autores -Washington Irving , Francis Parkman , e Isabel Bird- que vivieron o viajaron a través de las llanuras y montañas del oeste americano entre 1830 y 1890. Muchos viajeros y escritores del siglo XIX vieron este lugar como un sanatorio al aire libre donde poder recuperar la salud y el vigor. Se seleccionaron estos escritores de acuerdo al siguiente patrón: todos viajaron por el oeste y experimentaron su paisaje y su gente antes de que fueran alterados; cada uno de ellos buscó o bien el alivio de una enfermedad o bien escapar de un mundo percibido como demasiado limitador; aunque fuertemente afectados por lo que vieron, ninguno de ellos se mantuvo permanentemente en el oeste. Cada uno de ellos estuvo motivado por un impulso narrativo diferente.

In this paper we propose to examine the journals of three authors —Washington Irving, Francis Parkman, and Isabella Bird— who lived in or travelled through the western plains and mountains between 1830 and 1890. In the nineteenth century many travelers and writers viewed the American West as an open-air sanitarium where one went to regain health and vigor. These writers were selected based on their conformity to the following pattern: each travelled through the West to experience the landscape and its people before both were altered by settlement; each sought either relief from illness or escape from a world perceived as too confining; although strongly and at times positively affected by what they saw, none of them remained permanently in the West. Each one was motivated by a different narrative impulse.