FICTIONALITY AND THE LITERATURE OF TRAVEL: THE NARRATIVE IMAGINATION IN HEINRICH BARTH'S TRAVELS AND DISCOVERIES

Abstract

As the title of the text implies, there is a story of travel and observation organized around a central subject, and the text as a whole is this subject's story of the story of (his travels in) the Sudan. It is thus the union of event and action that gives Travels and Discoveries a plot-structure. From the literary perspective, this paper has found that the study of Barth as a storyteller, a narrativist and an embellisher need not be any less instructive, profound or liberating than the study of Barth as a historian. We posit in this paper that Literary Criticism should begin to engage with the whole range of cultural practices and textual organizations, not just narrowly fictional works such as novels and poems. Only then can the literary critic demonstrate, and make sense of the historical, political, and literary effectiveness that textuality has had, and will continue to have, on the broad cultural, epistemological, and pedagogic fields.


(Humanities Review: 2001 1(1): 1-14)