PS-Surveying English Literatures: The Grand Tour
James Daniel Mellor
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The Grand Tour began in the seventeenth century as a coming-of-age trip for wealthy young men to visit the primary sites of cultural heritage in Europe. In its wake, and with the rise of the middle class, people from many backgrounds embarked on touring as a way to see the cultural legacy and ruins of classic antiquity. By the late nineteenth century “Cook’s Tours” ushered in mass tourism, guide books, and souvenirs. In this century, cheap flights and the wish to go on “vacation” has made the original search for experience almost irrelevant. Yet the varieties of travel, writing, and ways of reading the world that have percolated down the ages continue to represent cultural encounters as way of imbuing oneself with knowledge or distinction. This course will survey the three centuries of touring to investigate the ways travel, reading, and writing continue to shape our notions of what “grand” experiences entail. This course is a literary course and will consist of extensive reading, so please only sign up if you have an interest in reading, and not just because it fits in with your timetable. Before the first session please read Turgenev’s The Torrents of Spring (sometimes entitled Spring Torrents).
close11 Class schedule
Regular appointments