Book Description

What does the word "quest" conjure up? A journey in the hope of fulfillment, an exploration of identities, questions, the nature of research itself, or the darker side of quest in the form of conquest, colonisation and displacement? These are some of the threads taken up and developed in this collection of essays by established and emerging scholars. Germaine Greer, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Serge Doubrovsky, A. S. Byatt, Novalis, Melville, Valéry, Beckett, Stanislao Nievo, Victor Segalen, Sibilla Aleramo, Dacia Maraini, Defoe, Tournier, Coetzee, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Cintio Vitier, Domingo del Monte, Ramón de Palma, Pablo Armando Fernández, Hubert Aquin, Anne Hébert , Homer, Proust, Balzac and Robbe-Grillet provide the literary voices that invite these scholars to embark on their own quests into subjects as diverse as the relationships between texts, authors and readers, the initiatic journey, spirituality and enlightenment, female autobiography and identity, oppression, imperialism and postcolonial discourses, not to mention the history of the quest itself. The result is a rich tapestry of thought-provoking insights into the inexhaustible connections between literature and quest.