Nostalgia y melodrama en las crónicas de viaje de María Moreno y Magali Tercero

Abstract

This article analyses the forms in which women have represented their displacements through diverse territories using the crónica genre, even when the travel as theme is not necessarily the narrative focus. The cases studied here are not based on the experience of traveling for pleasure or tourism, and therefore this study identifies differences between recent female travel writing and travel writing that traditionally has been produced by a professional travel chronicler, usually a man. The article compares two chronicle collections: Banco a la sombra, by María Moreno and Cuando llegaron los bárbaros, by Magali Tercero. It proposes that the motivation for traveling, in the case of these women authors, is more related to a personal, creative or professional search and less to an authorial intention of producing a crónica de viajes (travel chronicle). It is concluded that in order to narrate displacements within the current globalised context, Latin American women chroniclers employ modern discourse strategies, such as melodrama and nostalgic evocations, which allows them to express affective bonds with specific territories, communities and subjects during their travels.