Forms of nostalgia and (mis)recognition
The impossibility of homecoming in the Countess of Merlin's La Havane
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15086601 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Javier Uriarte (Schlumberger (Ireland), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 359-376 |
| Publication date | 2011-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Travel Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1364-5145 • E-ISSN: 1755-7550 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13645145.2011.617965 |
| OpenAlex | W2059247985 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
This essay suggests that the prose of María de las Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, known as the Countess of Merlin, should be read as a writing of non-arrival. It focuses on the pages dedicated to the description of Cuba and Havana from the narrator's ship before she actually arrives. These pages present a series of temporal and spatial oscillations that constitute an image of Merlin's own writing. If one of the main topics of La Havane is longing, and if distance is a condition for longing, then the homecoming becomes impossible. Spatially speaking, then, Merlin's writing inhabits a threshold; it could be said that temporally hers is a writing of imminence. In this sense the fact of the book having been first written in French operates as her voyage: it is a partial homecoming, in which each gesture of return is interrupted by the interference of a new distance; a distance which, in most cases, is imposed by the same approaching movement
Art · Art history · Homecoming · Impossibility · Literature · Merlin (protein · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · History · Philippine History and Culture · Travel Writing and Literature
| Citations per year | 0.11 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2017 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |