Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines

Richard Utz (Georgia Institute of Technology)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1987

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

This 1987 travelogue, Bruce Chatwin's most famous and hotly disputed text, is the autobiografictional fulfilment of a writerly dream which the author had been unable to pursue in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After he had ended his impressive career at Sotheby's London office (1959-66) because of a psychosomatic eye problem, Chatwin began to study archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Several field trips to Africa and Afghanistan during his course of study launched his idea to write an all-encompassing, scientific theory of nomadology. With this extensive project he intended to prove that the human race, in the process of becoming human, had acquired a strong migratory drive or instinct to walk long distances through the seasons.…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

965 words

Citation: Utz, Richard. "The Songlines". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 March 2001 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7782, accessed 26 November 2024.]

Save this article