Simone Rieck

16 February 2004

Review of I.S. MacLaren’s “Exploration/Travel Literature

and the Evolution of the Author”

Objectives:

Objective 1a. – Literature-as-Exploration; narrative as journey, author as guide, recognizing boundaries or limits.

Objective 2b. – How do we distinguish fiction from nonfiction?

Background:

MacLaren’s four stages of individual texts –

-         field note or log book entry

o       “Only stage in which the present tense appears, and sometimes the future” (41).

-         Journal

o       Inform with “continuity and purpose” (41).

o       “Transform themselves from travelers into authors” (42).

-         Draft for manuscript for a book

-         Publication

“The last two stages deal with the audience for the book.  Because the reader audience is sophisticated, the book must be able to appeal to the audience’s sophistication and correspond to widely held public social views.  MacLaren insists that it is in the third and fourth stage of writing where the greatest change occurs from the original view of the explorer and finished work of the author” (Craig Sprowl, presentation 2002).

Douglass rewrites Cook’s account of his voyage to make it more accessible to the public.

Discussion Questions:

Which version of travel/exploration writing do you consider more valuable – that written by the traveler in the form of a journal or field note or what is rewritten by an editor or ghostwriter? 

How does the genre change when an explorer/traveler’s experiences are rewritten?  Is it now fiction?