Imaginary Voyages in Literary Worlds: from transhistorical theory to contemporary practice

This doctoral dissertation entails a genre study of the imaginary voyage, with a particular focus on the borders, the textual dynamics, the characteristics and the interpretation of that genre in Dutch literature from 1945 to the present day. The label ‘imaginary voyage’ (with synonyms such as ‘travel novel’ and ‘travel fiction’) refers to all fictional stories which concentrate on one or more journeys. Internationally speaking, one could think of canonical texts such as Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires and Wells’ The Time Machine. Within postwar Dutch literature, the genre comprises novels by authors such as Hella Haasse (De ingewijden, 1957), Willem Frederik Hermans (Nooit meer slapen, 1966), Hugo Raes (e.g., Reizigers in de anti-tijd, 1970), Margareta Ferguson (Angst op Java, 1991), Willem Brakman (e.g., Een vreemde stam heeft mij geroofd, 1992), Kader Abdolah (e.g., Salam Europa!, 2016) and Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (e.g., Grand Hotel Europa, 2018).

Despite the abundance of fictional stories about travel, only few studies have examined travel fiction as a genre – with regard to postwar Dutch literature, one is even faced with completely unexplored research territory. Unsurprisingly, the idea of travel fiction as a ‘genre’ raises all sorts of questions and problems. How do you distinguish stories in which travel is a ‘central’ topic from stories in which it is not? When are such stories fictional? Can one actually speak of a distinctive generic group with not only a transhistorical and international tradition but also a certain ‘coherent’ dynamics – especially given the apparent ubiquity and diversity of travel texts? And if so, which (textual) dimensions determine this generic identity? This dissertation answers such questions and maps the modern Dutch imaginary voyage. To do so, it particularly uses a corpus of about 120 novels and novellas published in Dutch after 1945. Moreover, international canonical travel texts (such as the aforementioned) are included as a satellite corpus.

The extensive introduction of the thesis sketches the imaginary voyage as a ‘problematic’ genre and provides a comprehensive overview of several different research traditions that one way or another are concerned with travel in literature: the non-fictional travel writing studies, narratological research on space and movement, studies on related (sub)genres such as robinsonades, utopian travel texts, infernal journeys and time travel narratives... Subsequently, in the first of two main parts, this study focuses on the two fundamental criteria that define the generic borders of the imaginary travel narrative: its voyage and its fictionality. Using insights from narratology (such as the theory of narrative/ possible worlds), both criteria are clearly conceptualized. The conclusions are mapped in several dynamic guidelines, which readers can use to recognize and select imaginary voyages, as well as scrutinize their travel/fictional aspects. The second main section focuses on the eight dimensions that, combined, determine the generic identity and interpretive dynamics of postwar Dutch travel fiction: (1) the travel motive, including the goal and the destination; (2) the activity-passivity dialectic; (3) the interaction between mobility and immobility; (4) temporalization; (5) the traveler as outsider; (6) the importance of the gaze; (7) societal reflection; (8) and the connection between travel and literature. Each dimension is discussed in a distinctive chapter using specific textual analyses, thereby reflecting the ‘unified diversity’ which is characteristic of the imaginary travel genre – both the dimension’s continuity as well as its different facets/ manifestations are examined. At the end of this section, all eight dimensions are used to analyze one travel novel, Stefan Hertmans’ De bekeerlinge (The Convert). This way, it is shown how readers themselves can read and analyze texts as imaginary voyages.