https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.111
The Travelling Body in Spiritual Encounter: A Geocritical Analysis of Backer’s From MTV to Mecca and Hofmann’s Journey to Islam
BASILA MAISOON
Research Scholar
PG & Research Department of English
Farook College (Autonomous)
Affiliated to the University of Calicut, Kerala
basila@farookcollege.ac.in
ORCID: 0009-0009-1800-7968
DR. HASHMINA HABEEB
Assistant Professor
PG & Research Department of English
Farook College (Autonomous)
Affiliated to the University of Calicut, Kerala
hashminahabeeb@farookcollege.ac.in
ORCID: 0000-0002-9832-4112
Abstract: Travel involves movement across geographical spaces and cultures where the travelling self meets other bodies and gets acquainted with them. It is an amalgam of physical, spiritual, and psychological experiences. It also helps the traveller encounter various ideologies, cultures, and geographies that would otherwise be alien. By combining personal impressions as well as ethnographic descriptions of the visited land, a travelogue merges the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. Encountering a new culture may result in changes in the writer’s preconceived notions. The paper undertakes an analysis of two such Western autobiographies—From MTV to Mecca by Kristiane Backer and Journey to Islam by Murad Wilfried Hofmann—focusing on the writers’ spiritual encounters with Islam through their journeys and travels. A spiritual framework is employed to analyse how their travels result in their internal quest. By combining the ideas of literary cartography and deterritorialization/reterritorialization with the concept of spirituality through travel and employing a geocritical analysis, the paper maintains that the narratives espouse travel as a symbolic journey of their internal quest for spiritual attainment and the attribution of meaning to their identity construction. The depiction of places visited and experienced by the writers creates a spiritual space, as reflected in the mapping of their spiritual journeys.
Keywords: Travel, Spirituality, Islam, Quest, Autobiography, Literary Cartography, Geocriticism, Deterritorialization, Reterritorialization
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