Travel, Alterity, and Culture

Abstract

Trauma in the writings of Shakespeare and his contemporaries involved the representations of shock and violence, the text and world dwelling in an intricate and mutual relation. In texts and in the relation between author and reader, perspective is a key in the liminal space in which the drama of meaning occurs. Otherness does not, however, always have to do with wounds or trauma. In literature the identity with, and otherness of, nature that the landscapes present is another vantage with which to see poetics and the sense of cultural encounter. Our ways of seeing tell us something about alterity, identity, and how travel is a vital part of culture.