Trazos de nación: mujeres viajeras y discurso nacional (1830-1910)

Abstract

My dissertation is concerned with women’s travel writing and its connections to the discursive construction of gender and nation in the 19th-century. I examine in detail four insightful accounts by four prominent female writers who traveled to and from Latin America in the 19th-century: Flora Tristan (1803-1844), Juana Manuela Gorriti (1819-1892), Eduarda Mansilla (1838-1892), and Clorinda Matto de Turner (1852-1909). Organized in order of publication, the accounts range chronologically from the period of independence to the beginning of the 20th-century. I provide an original approach to this corpus of travelogues considering it as relevant for rethinking 19th-century culture and society in South America. My in-depth study of women’s travel narrative allows us to recover the relevant role of women within the national debate of the period at the same time it makes possible the revision of the literary canon, opening it up to new inquiries and critical approaches.