Travel theater? Modal paradoxes of a literary genre.

Abstract

This article examines, from a theoretical point of view, the possibility (or not) of finding a place in the literary field for a hypothetical genre called «travel theater» and what would be the correlate in the other mode of imitation of the recognized and booming «travel narrative ». The surprise that the denomination of the presumed genre causes is a symptom of the powerful modal resistance that such a hypothesis arouses and that pose a paradoxical outlook. After supporting the validity of the Aristotelian theory of the two modes of representation, each of the characteristics of a tentative definition of «travel narrative» is put up against its possible theatrical correlate. The empirical part examines a series of works that have been proposed or could be proposed as examples of a type of text (or show) that, though not recognized as a «genre» by the literary institution, could bear the name «travel theater».