From the narration of the "I" to the narration of the "other": the representation of Peruvian society in Peregrinaciones de una paria by Flora Tristán

Abstract

Travel literature is a literature of “otherness.” The discovery of cultural relativism and the suffering of the “other” is the main feature in Flora Tristan’s Peregrinaciones de una paria (1838). In this book, the Franco-Peruvian writer narrates her arduous journey that takes place in Peru between 1833 and 1834. Among the many interpretations that her testimony allows, we propose to define the importance of the “other” in the construction of the “I” of the narrator through two perspectives. First, we would conceive of the trip as a transformation of the “I” introspective narrative voice into an awakening of social conscience. Secondly, and from the definition of the concept of “pariah woman,” we would focus on the resemantization of the concept of pain established by Flora Tristan in her prose fiction.