Mary Poppins and the Soviet Pilgrimage : P.L.Travers's Moscow Excursion (1934) single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2013... 2013 Mary Poppins and the Soviet Pilgrimage : P.L.Travers's Moscow Excursion (1934)
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Like the journey it chronicles, Moscow Excursion, P.L.Travers’s account of her 1932 visit to Russia, was in part inspired by the genre it effectively parodies: the ‘Soviet pilgrimage’ ‘truth about Russia’ narrative characteristic of the Stalin decades and exemplified (in the Australian context) by Katharine Susannah Prichard’s The Real Russia, also published in 1934. The paper examines the ways in which Travers’s book is written against this genre to produce an avowedly ‘un-political’ record whose narrator rejects the restrictions of organized travel, and whose idiosyncratic and critical observations on Soviet reality contrast with the admiration of her more orthodox fellow-travellers for the usual showcase institutions on the official itinerary. At the same time, it is argued that in its blend of self-deprecating irony, whimsy and disillusioned idealism Moscow Excursion suggests parallels with Travers’s personal quest for ‘the truth’ and even with Mary Poppins, published only two months later.'

Source: Abstract.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Portal Australians Abroad vol. 10 no. 1 Juliana De Nooy (editor), 2013 11172608 2013 periodical issue

    'Although commonly characterized as an immigrant nation, Australia has been shaped just as importantly by the overseas journeys of its people, and the liminal experiences thus provided have not only been self-defining and defining of the other, but at times nation-defining. This special issue proposes a multidisciplinary analysis of Australian travellers and expatriates past and present: the reasons for and destinations of their travel, its impact on their identity, the roles they play, their writings and reflections, their linguistic and intercultural competence.

    'Clusters of travellers to particular destinations give rise to narrative patterns which solidify into templates, the narrative equivalent of the beaten track. The essays that follow highlight both discursive grooves and off-piste accounts that challenge the patterns. In both cases, the emphasis in the essays is on the travellers’ active engagement in the experience and on their negotiation of existing discourses. For even those who follow the trail invest it with personal meanings.'

    Source: Introduction.

         2013
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Last amended 11 May 2017 09:31:15
http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/portal/article/view/2343 Mary Poppins and the Soviet Pilgrimage : P.L.Travers's Moscow Excursion (1934)small AustLit logo Portal
Subjects:
  • Moscow,
    c
    Russia,
    c
    c
    Former Soviet Union,
    c
    Eastern Europe, Europe,
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