NARRATED TRAVEL AND RHETORICAL TROPES: PRODUCING

Abstract

Travelers' experiences in Cyprus and the texts they produce in light of these encounters function rhetorically, informing cultural relations among people of different societies. When the efforts of these travel writers are taken to be rhetorical, critics position themselves to identify how ethics, politics, and aesthetics of narration and self-representation create the tropes that fix other people in ideological space. This analysis examines the production of difference in selected travel narratives set in Cyprus in the later modern era, which coincides with the rise of anti-colonial politics, nationalism, and globalization (1955-2005). To further focus the analysis, I attend mostly to the representation of "the Turk" in this textual genre. An introductory chapter examines the rhetorical situation of the travel text of Cyprus, exploring rhetorical and critical concepts such as ethos, rhetoric as popular culture, and tropology; it also surveys the landscape of Cyprus as a destination of travel and introduces some of the major texts to be considered. Subsequent chapters explore the rhetoric of narrated travel writing set in Cyprus according to its variations in style and historical epoch. The critique examines the ethics of narration and representation in memoirs, travelogues, political journalism, guide books, and ethnographies by a diverse range of writers including Lawrence Durrell, Colin Thubron, and Christopher Hitchens. A concluding chapter considers alternative, rhetorically self-conscious forms of travel and writing that suggest different possibilities for an ethical future of travel, travel narration, and cultural encounters.