Abstract
Published in 1972, Calvino’s Invisible Cities, written as a travel work, is a fictional and metafictional account of a conversation between Marco Polo, the greatest traveller in the Western world, and an ageing Kublai Khan, the Emperor of the Yuan dynasty in China.
The paper reads the text as a self-conscious meditation on the conventions of travel writing, and examines the relationship between memory and experience, imagination and space, power and representation. The paper also explores Calvino’s critical interrogation of the dynamic between discursive practices, power, and the construction of travel narratives.
Reference
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Antara Datta
Associate Professor, Department of English, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi
Received: 28-02-2025, Accepted: 21-04-2025, Published Online: 23-04-2025