The ‘bricolage’ of travel writing: a Bakhtinian reading of nineteenth-century women's travel writings about Italy

Abstract

This paper argues that Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of heteroglossia and dialogism can be useful tools in the analysis of the multivocal nature of many nineteenth-century travel texts. Focusing on two accounts of travels in Italy, one published by Maria Graham in 1820 and one published by Harriet Morton in 1829, the paper demonstrates the ways in which the multiple voices in the texts work as dialogised heteroglossia, interacting with one another as well as with the voices of the authors.