Viajeros chilenos romanticos: Diarios, cartas, recuerdos. (Spanish text);

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the travel literature of nineteenth-century Chilean writers to reveal the role of the narrator-traveler in the context of his narration, to explore the relationship between travel and writing, and to describe deviations from European models of travel literature. The literature discussed includes journals, letters and memoirs. These documents involve journeys to Europe, to the United States, within South America and around the world. Chapters I-VI discuss the travel journals of Vicente Perez Rosales, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Isidoro Errazuriz and Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna, particularly focusing on the itinerary, the ideological and idiosyncratic perspective, and the voice of each writer as these shift as a result of encounters during their travels. These chapters explore the function of maps and drawings in relation to the narration. Chapters VII-X analyze the travel letters of Jose Victorino Lastarria, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Pedro Del Rio Zanartu and quote some letters by Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna. These chapters explore different forms of travel letters and the blend of perspectives which occur as a result of the writers' encounters with others during their travels. This section of the dissertation devotes particular attention to revealing deviations from European travel literature, to the interplay between itinerary and narration, and to subtle shifts in point of view. Chapters XI-XIII focus on the travel memoirs of Vicente Perez Rosales, and Jose Zapiola. These chapters explore the relationships between selective memory and autobiography, collective history and personal history, and the narrative processes of retrospection versus transcription from travelogues. The Conclusion explores the similarities and differences among narrative processes as well as analyzing distinguishing elements in the three forms: journals, letters and memoirs. Despite the objective stance and intention of each of the narrators, the subjectivity of their writing emerges. Once the traveller becomes narrator, he does not simply relate the objective events of his travels but also discloses the subjectivity of his experiences in that context.