Travel : a literary history / Peter Whitfield.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Whitfield, Peter, 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Travelers' writings--History and criticism.

Travelers' writings.

Physical Description:

xi, 303 pages, 14 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color), maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Bodleian Library, 2011.

Summary:

No previous generation has ever travelled so energetically or so obsessively as ours, nor has travel writing ever been so much in fashion as it is now. But behind the self-conscious literary artistry of today's narratives there lies a rich and fascinating history of travel writing, stretching back over several thousand years. Travel writing has emerged from migration, war, exploration, trade, conquest, pilgrimage, science, and poetic longing. But when they recorded their travels, the military commanders of Greece and Rome, the navigators of the Age of Discovery, the diplomats and missionaries of the seventeenth century, the dilettantes who set out on the Grand Tour, the romantic travellers and the scientists of the nineteenth century all had one thing in common: they were re-imagining the world, re-interpreting it in their own minds and for their readers. This is the first general survey of the entire history of travel literature, with illustrations reproduced from manuscripts and books in the Bodleian Library's collections.

Contents:

1 The Prehistory of Travel Writing 1

2 The Age of Discovery 39

3 The Seventeenth Century: The Non-conquerors 79

4 The Eighteenth Century: Travelling for Knowledge 125

5 The Nineteenth Century: The Theatre of the World 180

6 The Twentieth Century: No Foreign Land 242.

ISBN:

1851243380

9781851243389

OCLC:

733723621

Publisher Number:

99948070182