Romantic Geographies: Discourses of travel 1775–1884

… journal of travel and travel writing, 2000

Monatshefte, 2004

Classical autobiographical travel reports are structured along four variables. An identifiable subject (1) travels to foreign countries (2), and offers his readers at home (3) a written report of his experience (4). 1 Alexander von Humboldt's Relation historique du Voyage aux Régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent (1814-1831) distorts this model by challenging each of these four basic elements: the author as a narrator and protagonist, the country as a topic, the reading public as an audience and the report itself as a literary text. Who is speaking here, about what, to whom, and how? 1. Subject Who is writing? Who is speaking? And about whose experience? Who is the author, the narrator, and the protagonist? Do all three really fuse in the figure "Alexander von Humboldt," as history and biography would lead us to assume, as the conventional form of the travel narrative seems to demand, and as most readers expect? Who are the subjects of the Relation historique.. . ? The text's 'signature' already spells out the problems with its ascription. 2 The Relation historique.. . 3 is the "Première Partie," or volumes one, two and three, embedded in a 29-volume work, 4 the title of which establishes a collective authorship: Voyage aux Régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent fait en 1799

The Journal of Popular Culture, 1993

Literature & Aesthetics 22 (1): i-iv, 2012

Text: Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs, 2019

Travelling is always a travelling in traces-looking for traces of past cultures or following the traces of previous travellers. These traces can be material or textual, visual, performative or mnemonic. In some of the best of 20 th travel writing, such quests for traces do, however, take an inward and self-reflective turn in which travel writing becomes a form of self-writing and self-staging. In my essay, I will survey this development from the eighteenth century to the present, beginning with Grand Tour accounts of journeys to Italy to then focus on modernist and postmodernist travel writing. This will take us not only to Etruscan Places with DH Lawrence or Patagonia with Bruce Chatwin, to Asia Minor on Alexander's Path with Freya Stark or to the Caribbean with Amryl Johnson but back into these writer's lives, their deepest memories and desires. What should emerge in my readings is how writing the 'Other' can become a way of writing the Self.

Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative, 2019

This is the story of my transatlantic life experience as an American pursuing a PhD in the UK for five years in dialogue with some British travellers that have comprised my scholarly inquiry for over ten years. Some travellers include: Morris Birkbeck, who left England for Illinois in 1817 seeking agricultural opportunities; he published his travelogue in 1818 inviting others to join him. William Cobbett, a well-known social reformer and outspoken critic of Birkbeck, Published his travelogue in 1818. William Faux responded to Birkbeck’s call; he criticized America for the practice of slavery, but enjoyed the plantation comforts slavery afforded. Frances Wright wanted to “fix” America’s slavery problem but otherwise saw the nation as a utopia; she travelled as a 20-something single woman and published her glowing report in 1821, returning in 1824 to implement a slavery-solution. Frances Trollope, vitriolic critic of American manners, ended up frustrated in Cincinnati after following Frances Wright and not getting what she bargained for. These travellers responded in print to each other, or knew each other personally. The chapter will offer research alongside reflections on travel, identity, nation, and privilege. As a storyteller and performer, this essay is based on a performative-dialogue delivered at the inter-disciplinary.net Storytelling conference of 2016 where my twenty-first century traveller-self spoke before an audience with a cast of traveller-characters.

Revista de Filología de la Universidad de La Laguna

ABSTRACT The present essay review explores the role played by travels to form cultures as well as the use of travel writing in the social science. Over centuries, intellectuals rested their reflections on the testimonies of travels as they have been formulated by other travelers. Whether medieval or pre-industrial travel experiences were used to delineate the epistemology of the whole social sciences in Europe, the viewpoint of tourist is neglected as naïve or subject to the lack of objectivity. Why travels now are not taken into consideration for the epistemologists?. Are modern tourists more naïve or enrooted in a great variety of prejudices? Are ancient travellers very different to tourists? © 2014 Pak Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

2018

2017

In France, a vast travel literature emerges throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, which is part of the European “politics of world exploration” (Despoix) that comes to map out multiple inter- and intracultural “contact zones” (Pratt). It also contributes considerably to the production of a particular world knowledge which comprises both traditional figures of comparing the ‘Old’ and the ‘New World’ (such as the 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes') as well as new scientific taxonomies and classifications belonging to the fields of geography, biology or botany. (co-taught together with Prof. Dr. Kirsten Kramer)

Lookinga tt he development of studies of travel writinga nd travel accounts through recent decades one can distinguish between three different stages: to begin with, and actually starting with the very first collections and bibliographies of travel accounts from the late eighteenth century onwards,t he texts werep rimarilya ppreciateda sg oldmines of informationa bout the continents, countries,s ocieties, and cultures described by the manyd ifferent pilgrims, explorers,s cholars, and tourists.F rom the 1980s onwards,a nd duen ot least to the influenceo fM ichel Foucault and of EdwardW .S aid's Orientalism¹ many of the same texts werec riticized and valued as sources for ab etter understanding of the travelers' own prejudices and imperial gaze,cultures, and mentalities and thoseo ft heira udience and readers. Through the lastcouple of decades, however,itseems as if we have entered yeta nother stage: awhole wave of studies aiming at presentingt ravela ccounts as sources for global, transnational, entangled, and connected histories (Verflechtungsgeschichte and histoire croisée), and history of knowledge (Wissensgeschichte). To some extent,these turns and programmatic calls have come about as ac ritical prolongation of the postcolonial studies of the final decades of the twentieth century,but realizingthatitmight not be enough to blame the West for its images and knowledge of "the Rest" has led manyt oabetter understanding of how travel accounts can be read not necessarilyasr eflections of an either/or approach, but as expressions of the interactive and multidimensional productivity of the encounters. When the contextual complexities and knowledge effects at both ends, at destinations as well as points of departure and return, have to be taken into account,the more interesting studies tend to concentrate on one travel account or one traveler at the time. Previously, studies of largera rrayso ft ravela ccountsthose to the Orient or the New World, or those of French, British, Italian, or German travelers for example-werefairlycommon. Today, such comparative studies certainlystill continue to be published,but new insights seem rather to come from studies of single and perhaps also less well-known travelersa nd travel accounts.