Rewriting stereotypes on Spain: Unveiling the counter-picturesque in Katharine Lee Bates

Abstract

This article analyzes the use of the concept of the picturesque in Katharine Lee Bates’s travelogue Spanish Highways and Byways (1900). By comparing Bates’s text to previous travel narratives, the essay explores how stereotypes written about Spain are challenged and reformulated within the framework of imperial discourse. Bates’s political and ideological agenda attempts to construct an alternative discourse through the use of what I have called the counter-picturesque. The essay contributes to the study of travelogues written by American women and to the field of imagology as related to Spain