Travel Literature

Question 1

What is the grand tour?

Answer 1

• Began in the late 16th century
• Practice where men of a certain class travel to places in Europe as a culmination of their education
• Idea is that they learned about all those places and are now going to go to those places
• Not only educational experience - men are young and wealthy so get up in all sorts of trouble like affairs
• Typically a young man with a grounding of roman and Greek literature with interest in looking at sculptures
• Alps very important for the sublime experience

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Question 2

What is important about Goethe?

Answer 2

• He is interested in the kinds of things you would experience as a traveller but someone who is travelling for the first time - so he is struck by the things he is not sued to and does a cultural comparison
• He is very self-conscious as a viewer and someone experiencing this amazing place for the first time
• He wants to develop a new elasticity of mind so he works on his powers of observation
• He is a self-observant viewer so he watches himself while viewing
• There is a sort of competition between what he already knows and what he is actually experiencing
• Talks about repetition - he thinks first impressions must be repeated and that visual apprehension must be given time - to fully understand something you must see it multiple times
• He finds there is too much in Rome and cannot possibly capture everything in writing

Question 3

Where is the middle passage in Equiano’s narrative?

Answer 3

-Between Africa and the West Indies (always a terrible experience)

Question 4

How is Equiano’s a slave narrative?

Answer 4

• It contains the three parts: slave, escape, freedom

- He often wrote with the encouragement of abolitionists

Question 5

How is Equiano’s a spiritual autobiography?

Answer 5

• Usually character has heroine experience where they have transformation then they are reborn as spiritual individual
• Him being reborn in the end is not only literal freedom but also spiritual freedom

Question 6

How is Equiano’s a travel book and adventure story?

Answer 6

• He does not have life of a plantation slave - he is more of an observer
• Chapter 2 especially

Question 7

Summerize what happened to Equiano.

Answer 7

• Born in Africa then at young age him and his sister were kidnapped and sold to slave traders
• Sent to West Indies through the middle passage
• Sold to Pascal, during this time Equiano found God and was hoping that Pascal would free him, when Pascal heard of this he sold Equiano to Doran
• Doran wold Equiano to a Quaker merchant named King who treated Equiano well. They travelled together to America and West Indies where Equiano observed the horrible treatment of Africans in plantations
• King allowed Equiano to go on several voyages with his friend Farmer
• King and Thomas accused Equiano in trying to escape but when they found out he was not they felt guilty and told him that if he could raise the funds King would help in out in paying for his freedom
• Equiano purchased his freedom and continued to sail with Farmer as a steward and went to places like the North Pole, Turkey and Grenada
• Becomes abolitionist