LC 100T The Stories We Live By: Travel Writing and Switzerland
We live our lives surrounded by stories. They are literally everywhere and we use them, consciously or unconsciously, to make sense of our identities and our actions, our experiences and our lives. At the same time as we use stories to understand our worlds, we are shaped by the many stories that we are constantly absorbing and interpreting: we are our stories and our stories are us.
This course is an introduction to this ongoing cycle of shaping stories and being shaped by stories, in particular stories about travel and by travel writers. As such, this course will serve as a foundation for your Franklin experience. Key concepts include narrative voice, intended audience, frame narratives, unreliable narrators, and stream-of-consciousness. Students will study examples of travel literature from the Odyssey to the salons of Mme de Stael, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to twentieth-century travel writers Nicolas Bouvier and Ella Maillart. Course will include visits to the Val d'Anniviers in the Valais, Lausanne, Coppet, and Geneva as well as an excursion the Rousseau’s Ile de St-Pierre and writing workshops that feature meetings with contemporary Swiss writers.