Abstract:
Travel writing is an ancient and broad genre of literature, and an important subject in
the humanities and social sciences. It has provided cultural, historical, religious,
philosophical, political, even environmental debates, and its study has become a fruitful
academic enterprise. It is also a genre that is in constant flux, depending first, on the
cultures, places, and people that the traveller investigates and chooses to write about, and
second, on the aims of the interpreting community.
This thesis mainly argues that travel literature reflects the shift in Lebanon’s reason of
existence as a traveller’s destination: before the civil war, spiritual and cultural interest
dominated, and after the war, business and tourism. Three major travel books on Lebanon
in the 20th and the 21st centuries that are discussed are The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in
Lebanon by Colin Thubron (1968; 2008); Hibat al-Jabal: Rihla ila Lubnan (2004) (The
Mountain’s Gift: A Travel to Lebanon) by Ahmad Haridi; and Beirut Shi Mahal (2006)
(Beirut Some Place) by Youssef Rakha. These three books demonstrate how the discourse
of a strong and peaceful past conflicts with the discourse of a weak and disturbed present,
as the writers, unknown to each other, anticipate or come to terms with the civil war.
Theoretical insights provided by Mieke Bal’s work on narratology and Bakhtin’s
concept of the chronotope are used to examine the hidden layers of the texts and analyze
their several meanings as affecting the writers’ intention in narrating and the reader’s role
in interpreting.
