Chapter 9 Writing the Nation, Writing the Self: Discourses of Identity in Fanny Lewald’s Italienisches Bilderbuch and George Sand’s Un hiver à Majorque
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Abstract
This paper argues that travel writing is a fundamental medium in the processes of political and social change in Europe from the late 18th to the middle of the 19th century. In particular it played a key role in the formation of collective national identities and cultures, as well as in the formation of the middle class and individual identities, as both are implicitly emphasised, depicted, performed and negotiated in travel writing of this period. In a case study, I analyse the two travelogues Italienisches Bilderbuch (Italian Picturebook, 1847) by Fanny Lewald and Un hiver à Majorque (Winter in Majorca, 1842) by George Sand with regards to the discourses of (national and individual) identity and identify the particular structures and characteristics of the texts that make the hugely popular genre of travelogues in the late 18th and 19th century a fundamental medium of social, cultural, and political developments.