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Article In: English Text Construction: Online-First Articles

An ‘English home’

Constructions of familiarity and instability in Lucy Atkinson’s Recollections of Tartar steppes and their inhabitants (1863)

ORCiD logo with link | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
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Abstract
Other than considerations as a historical source, little has been written on Lucy Atkinson’s travelogue Recollections of Tartar steppes and their inhabitants (. 1863. Recollections of Tartar steppes and their inhabitants. London: John Murray.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) as a work of writing. This article sets out to redress that imbalance by analysing the role of the epistolary form and the linguistic implications of travel in the construction of the memoir. We aim to demonstrate that by means of language and form, the author explores the (trans)portability of the English language as a ‘home away from home’. First, the article considers the affordances granted by Atkinson’s use of the epistolary to construct her persona and narrative. Next, it explores the cultural translation in the travelogue by zooming in on shifting stances regarding the ‘self’ and the ‘Other’ in the text, e.g. by means of various language uses, and by connecting it to the problematisation of complex notions of ‘home’ and ‘Englishness’ during her travels.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Recollections, epistolarity and the potential of the letter
  • 3.The opportunities of form
  • 4.Projections of ‘home’ and ‘Englishness’
  • 5.Atkinson and the ‘Other’
  • 6.‘Home’ as an unstable concept
  • 7.The portable home: Atkinson’s politics of language
  • 8.“Pleasurable Reminiscences of past Adventures”
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
References (53)
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