Journal of Literary Writing and Evaluation

JLWE, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2025, pp.234-246.

Print ISSN: 3078-8129; Online ISSN: 3104-5073

Journal homepage: https://www.lwejournal.com

DOI: Https://doi.org/10.64058/JLWE.25.2.06

From I to We: Opening and Enclosing the Traveller via ntertextuality in The Art of Travel

Fang Yaqi, Li Yun

Abstract: This article rereads Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel through Julia Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality and recent calls for a critical intertextuality attentive to power and cultural capital. While intertextual studies have long emphasized the decentering of the author and the openness of textual meaning, this essay shows how De Botton reclaims a soft cultural authority through a pronounced pronoun shift from I to we. The narrative begins with a confessional, vulnerable traveller’s I and draws readers into a polyphonic field filled with canonical voices—Huysmans, Ruskin, Wordsworth—creating an enticing sense of dialogic participation. Yet this openness soon narrows: citations are meticulously glossed, interpretive gaps close, and the inclusive we stabilize into a model reader, implicitly middle-class and aesthetically trained. The book’s climactic call to break routine habit in fact leads to the cultivation of a socially legible habitus, embedding perception within Eurocentric, upper-middle-class taste regimes. By combining Kristeva’s notion of the subject-in-process with critical intertextuality and Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, the article reframes intertextual travel writing as a site where author and reader are invited but subtly disciplined. This reading also illuminates how pre-social-media “slow travel” narratives anticipate today’s influencer-led travel media: intimate and democratic in tone, yet quietly regulatory in taste and class.

Keywords: Intertextuality; Critical Intertextuality; Travel Writing; Cultural Capital; Authorship and Subjectivity

Author Biography: Fang Yaqi, MA candidate, School of Foreign Languages, South China University of Technology, research direction: Foreign Literature. Email: 914318925@qq.com. Li Yun, Professor, School of Foreign Languages, South China University of Technology, research interests: Foreign Literature. Email: flly@scut.edu.cn.

题目：从“我”到“我们”：《旅行的艺术》互文性与旅行者的开放和封闭

摘要：本文重读阿兰·德波顿（Alain de Botton）的《旅行的艺术》，以朱莉娅·克里斯蒂娃（Julia Kristeva）的互文性理论为核心，并结合近年来对“批判性互文性”的呼吁，关注文本中的权力关系与文化资本再生产。传统的互文性研究长期强调作者的去中心化与意义的开放性，但本文指出，德波顿通过显著的代词转换——从“我”到“我们”——重新确立了一种柔性的文化权威。文本开端以旅行者“我”的自白与脆弱姿态吸引读者，并通过汇聚于惠斯曼、罗斯金、华兹华斯等经典之声构建出诱人的对话性场域。然而，这种开放性很快被收缩：引用被精心注释，解释空隙逐渐关闭，包容性的“我们”最终稳固为一种隐含的“理想读者”形象——既中产阶级，又受过美学训练。书中对“打破日常习惯”的呼吁，最终导向的是一种可被社会识别的惯习的养成，将感知重新嵌入以欧洲中心、上中产阶级品味为核心的审美体系。通过结合克里斯蒂娃“过程中的主体”概念、批判性互文性及布迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu）的文化资本理论，本文重新界定互文性旅行写作为一个既邀请读者进入，又在不知不觉中加以规训的场域。同时，本研究揭示了在社交媒体兴起之前的“慢旅行”叙事如何为当代网红主导的旅行内容奠定基础：它们表面上亲密、民主，实则在品味与阶层上暗自进行规范化与筛选。

关键词：互文性；批判性互文性；旅行写作；文化资本；作者性与主体性

作者简介：方雅麒，华南理工大学外国语学院2023级硕士研究生，研究方向：外国文学。电邮：914318925@qq.com。李  昀，华南理工大学外国语学院教授，研究方向：外国文学。电邮：flly@scut.edu.cn。

     Received: 30 Sep2025 / Revised: 1 Nov 2025 / Accepted: 14 Nov 2025 / Published online: 30 Nov 2025 / Print published: 30 Dec 2025.