Representation of an absent space: construction of the United States and New York in 1950s and 1960s Czech travel writing

Abstract

Early postwar Czech travel writing was mainly concerned with representations of countries from the newly emerging Soviet Bloc and former European colonies in the developing world. In this way, travel writing played a role in nation-building and the creation of new cultural identity. However, following the slow process of political liberalization, the United States became an increasingly visible feature of travel narratives, concomitant with interest and reception of American literature in the second part of the 1950s and throughout the 1960s. While focusing on the analysis of space and articulation of the identities of travelers/narrators, the article tracks the re-emergence of the image of America in various types of travel narratives in order to depict a trajectory from the representation of a strictly bipolar world in political reportage from the early 1950s, to its subversion in the travel writing of the 1960s.