Travel Writers Online

Congratulations to Annie Ernaux today, Nobel laureate 2022 for Literature.  My monograph examines the writing practices of three contemporary French writers working in the closing decades of the twentieth century in Paris. The aim is to discover if travel writing, a practice chosen by all three, belongs to a specific discourse which suits the writing practice of the authors in their treatment of a particular subject. Within this the study attempts to discover defining aspects of what may be called the genre of travel writing, by finding parallels in the work of all three writers and then by examining the uses of these aspects or themes to understand what they offer the writer as a means of expression. One work in particular is studied in detail as the key text for this research, this is the second travel journal by Annie Ernaux (2000) La Vie extérieure. Read more about her travel writing here on ResearchGate at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267331805_Traversing_Paris_Fre...

My first major investigation of contemporary travel writing practices focussed on Paris. I examined the work and the writing methods of three important figures in French literature: Annie Ernaux, François Maspero and Jean Rolin, writers normally studied for their fiction writing.  Along with a documentary photographer, Anaïk Frantz, who worked with Maspero on his prizewinning travel book Passengers of the Roissy Express (1990). Maspero challenges travel writing by situating his journey on the Paris train that serves CDG airport. In travel writing, this conceit of the unexpectedly short journey is taken up by the other two authors discussed here. Annie Ernaux Annie Ernaux was born at Lillebonne in September 1940 but now lives near Paris. During the 1990s she published two collections of what appear to be diaries of everyday life. They are documents of her daily commuting on the RER and metro from a suburb of Paris, Val d’Oise in Cergy, into the city centre. The two books in this ...