| Literature | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||||
| Oral literature | ||||||
| Major written forms | ||||||
| ||||||
| Prose genres | ||||||
| ||||||
| Poetry genres | ||||||
| ||||||
| Dramatic genres | ||||||
| History | ||||||
| Lists and outlines | ||||||
| Theory andcriticism | ||||||
 Literature portal | ||||||
The genre oftravel literature ortravelogue encompassesoutdoor literature,guide books,nature writing, and travelmemoirs.[1]
One early travel memoirist inWestern literature wasPausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In theearly modern period,James Boswell'sJournal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786) helped shape travel memoir as a genre.
Early examples of travel literature include thePeriplus of the Erythraean Sea (generally considered a 1st century CE work; authorship is debated),Pausanias'Description of Greece in the 2nd century CE,Safarnama (Book of Travels) byNasir Khusraw (1003-1077), theJourney Through Wales (1191) andDescription of Wales (1194) byGerald of Wales, and the travel journals ofIbn Jubayr (1145–1214),Marco Polo (1254–1354), andIbn Battuta (1304–1377), all of whom recorded their travels across the known world in detail. As early as the 2nd century CE,Lucian of Samosata discussed history and travel writers who added embellished, fantastic stories to their works.[2] The travel genre was a fairly common genre in medievalArabic literature.[3]
In China, 'travel record literature' (Chinese:遊記文學;pinyin:yóujì wénxué) became popular during theSong dynasty (960–1279).[4] Travel writers such asFan Chengda (1126–1193) andXu Xiake (1587–1641) incorporated a wealth ofgeographical andtopographical information into their writing, while the 'daytrip essay'Record of Stone Bell Mountain by the noted poet and statesmanSu Shi (1037–1101) presented a philosophical and moral argument as its central purpose. Chinese travel literature of this period was written in a variety of different styles, includingnarratives,prose,essays anddiaries, although most were written in prose.[5]Zhou Daguan's account ofCambodia in the thirteenth century is among the major sources for the city ofAngkor in its prime.
One of the earliest known records of taking pleasure in travel, of travelling for the sake of travel and writing about it, isPetrarch's (1304–1374)ascent of Mont Ventoux in 1336. He states that he went to the mountaintop for the pleasure of seeing the top of the famous height. His companions who stayed at the bottom he calledfrigida incuriositas ("a cold lack of curiosity"). He then wrote about his climb, makingallegorical comparisons between climbing the mountain and his own moral progress in life.[6][7]
Michault Taillevent [fr], a poet for theDuke of Burgundy, travelled through theJura Mountains in 1430 and recorded his personal reflections, his horrified reaction to the sheer rock faces, and the terrifying thunderous cascades of mountain streams.[8]Antoine de la Sale (c. 1388 – c. 1462), author ofPetit Jehan de Saintre, climbed to the crater of a volcano in theLipari Islands in 1407, leaving us with his impressions. "Councils of mad youth" were his stated reasons for going. In the mid-15th century, Gilles le Bouvier, in hisLivre de la description des pays, gave us his reason to travel and write:[9]
Because many people of diverse nations and countries delight and take pleasure, as I have done in times past, in seeing the world and things therein, and also because many wish to know without going there, and others wish to see, go, and travel, I have begun this little book.
By the 16th century, accounts to travels to India and Persia had become common enough that they had been compiled into collections such as theNovus Orbis ("New World") bySimon Grynaeus, and collections byRamusio andRichard Hakluyt.[10] 16th century travelers to Persia included the brothersRobert Shirley andAnthony Shirley, and for IndiaDuarte Barbosa,Ralph Fitch,Ludovico di Varthema,Cesare Federici, andJan Huyghen van Linschoten.[10] Humanist travellers in Europe also produced accounts, often noting monuments and inscriptions, e.g.,Seyfried Rybisch'sItinerarium (1570s),Michel de Montaigne'sJournal de voyage (1581),Germain Audebert's [fr]Voyage d'Italie (1585) andAernout van Buchel'sIter Italicum (1587–1588).[11]
In the 18th century, travel literature was commonly known as "books of travels", which mainly consisted of maritimediaries.[12] In 18th-century Britain, travel literature was highly popular, and almost every famous writer worked in the travel literature form;[13]Gulliver's Travels (1726), for example, is a socialsatire imitating one, and CaptainJames Cook's diaries (1784) were the equivalent of today's best-sellers.[14]Alexander von Humboldt'sPersonal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of America, during the years 1799–1804, originally published in French, was translated to multiple languages and influenced later naturalists, includingCharles Darwin.
Other later examples of travel literature include accounts of theGrand Tour: aristocrats, clergy, and others with money and leisure time travelled Europe to learn about the art and architecture of its past. One tourism literature pioneer wasRobert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) withAn Inland Voyage (1878), andTravels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), about his travels in theCévennes (France), is among the first popular books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities, and tells of commissioning one of the firstsleeping bags.[15][16][17][18]
Other notable writers of travel literature in the 19th century include the RussianIvan Goncharov, who wrote about his experience of a tour around the world inFrigate "Pallada" (1858), andLafcadio Hearn, who interpreted the culture ofJapan with insight and sensitivity.[19]
The 20th century'sinterwar period has been described as a heyday of travel literature when many established writers such asGraham Greene,Robert Byron,Rebecca West,Freya Stark,Peter Fleming andEvelyn Waugh were traveling and writing notable travel books.[20]
In the late 20th century there was a surge in popularity of travel writing, particularly in the English-speaking world with writers such asBruce Chatwin,Paul Theroux,Jonathan Raban,Colin Thubron, and others. While travel writing previously had mainly attracted interest by historians and biographers, critical studies of travel literature now also developed into an academic discipline in its own right.[21]
Travel books come in styles ranging from thedocumentary, to the literary, as well as the journalistic, and from memoir to the humorous to the serious. They are often associated withtourism and includeguide books.[22] Travel writing may be found on web sites, in periodicals, on blogs and in books. It has been produced by a variety of writers, including travelers, military officers, missionaries, explorers, scientists, pilgrims, social and physical scientists, educators, and migrants.
Travelogues are a special kind of texts that sometimes are disregarded in the literary world. They weave together aspects ofmemoir,non-fiction, and occasionally evenfiction to produce a story that is equally about the trip and the goal. Throughout history, people have told stories about their travels like the ancient tales of explorers and pilgrims, as well asblogs andvlogs in recent time. A "factual" piece detailing a trip to a distant country is that the travelogue emerged as a significant item in late nineteenth-centurynewspapers. Short stories genre of that era were influenced directly and significantly by the travelogues that shared many traits with short stories. Authors generally, especiallyHenry James andGuy de Maupassant, frequently wrote travelogues and short tales concurrently, often using the same countries as theirsettings.
Travel literature often intersects with philosophy oressay writing, as inV. S. Naipaul'sIndia: A Wounded Civilization (1976), whose trip became the occasion for extended observations on a nation and people. This is similarly the case inRebecca West'sBlack Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941),[23] focused on her journey through Yugoslavia, and inRobin Esrock's series of books about his discoveries in Canada, Australia and around the globe.[24] Fictional travel narratives may also show this tendency, as inMark Twain'sAdventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) orRobert M. Pirsig'sZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974).
Sometimes a writer will settle into a locality for an extended period, absorbing a sense of place while continuing to observe with a travel writer's sensibility. Examples of such writings includeLawrence Durrell'sBitter Lemons (1957),Bruce Chatwin's widely acclaimedIn Patagonia (1977) andThe Songlines (1987),[25]Deborah Tall'sThe Island of the White Cow: Memories of an Irish Island (1986),[26] andPeter Mayle's best-sellingA Year in Provence (1989) and its sequels.
Travel and nature writing merge in many of the works bySally Carrighar,Gerald Durrell andIvan T. Sanderson. Sally Carrighar's works includeOne Day at Teton Marsh (1965),Home to the Wilderness (1973), andWild Heritage (1965).Gerald Durrell'sMy Family and Other Animals (1956) is an autobiographical work by the British naturalist. It tells of the years that he lived as a child with his siblings and widowed mother on the Greek island ofCorfu between 1935 and 1939. It describes the life of the Durrell family in a humorous manner, and explores the fauna of the island. It is the first and most well-known of Durrell's "Corfu trilogy", together withBirds, Beasts, and Relatives andThe Garden of the Gods (1978).
Ivan T. Sanderson publishedAnimal Treasure, a report of an expedition to the jungles of then-British West Africa;Caribbean Treasure, an account of an expedition toTrinidad,Haiti, andSurinam, begun in late 1936 and ending in late 1938; andLiving Treasure, an account of an expedition toJamaica, British Honduras (nowBelize) and theYucatán. These authors arenaturalists, who write in support of their fields of study.
Another naturalist,Charles Darwin, wrote his famous account of the journey ofHMSBeagle at the intersection of science, natural history and travel.[27]
A number of writers famous in other fields have written about their travel experiences. Examples areSamuel Johnson'sA Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775);Charles Dickens'American Notes for General Circulation (1842);Mary Wollstonecraft'sLetters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796);Hilaire Belloc'sThe Path To Rome (1902);D. H. Lawrence'sTwilight in Italy and Other Essays (1916);Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays (1927);Rebecca West'sBlack Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941); andJohn Steinbeck'sTravels with Charley: In Search of America (1962).[28]
The Dutch writerCees Nooteboom is a prolific travel writer. Among his many travel books is the acclaimedRoads to Santiago.[29] EnglishmenEric Newby,[30]H. V. Morton, the AmericansBill Bryson andPaul Theroux, andWelsh authorJan Morris are or were widely acclaimed as travel writers (though Morris has frequently claimed herself as a writer of 'place' rather than travelper se).[31] Canadian travel writerRobin Esrock has written a series of books[32] about discovering unique experiences in Canada, Australia and around the world.
Bill Bryson in 2011 won the Golden Eagle Award from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild.[33] On 22 November 2012, Durham University officially renamed theMain Library the Bill Bryson Library for his contributions as the university's 11th chancellor (2005–11).[34][35] Paul Theroux was awarded the 1981James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novelThe Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name. He was also awarded in 1989 theThomas Cook Travel Book Award forRiding the Iron Rooster.
In 2005, Jan Morris was awarded theGolden PEN Award byEnglish PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature".[36][37]
The French writer,Lucie Azema, has noted that the majority of travel writing is by men and even when women have written travel books, these tend to be forgotten. In her bookLes femmes aussi sont du voyage (Women are also travellers), she has argued that male travel writing gives an unequal, colonialist and misogynistic view of the world.[38]
In the world of sailingFrank Cowper'sSailing Tours (1892–1896)[39] andJoshua Slocum'sSailing Alone Around the World (1900) are classics of outdoor adventure literature.[40]
Jules Verne's adventure novels are classical examples of adventure literature. Some of his most famous novels areTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea andAround the World in Eighty Days.
A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place, designed for the use of visitors or tourists".[41] An early example isThomas West's guide to the EnglishLake District, published in 1778.[42]Thomas West, an Englishpriest, popularized the idea of walking for pleasure in his guide to theLake District of 1778. In the introduction he wrote that he aimed:
to encourage the taste of visiting the lakes by furnishing the traveller with a Guide; and for that purpose, the writer has here collected and laid before him, all the select stations and points of view, noticed by those authors who have last made the tour of the lakes, verified by his own repeated observations.[43]
To this end he included various 'stations' or viewpoints around the lakes, from which tourists would be encouraged to appreciate the views in terms of their aesthetic qualities.[44] Published in 1778 the book was a major success.[45]
Mariana Starke popularized what became the standard travel guide, a reference book that can include information relating to accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying detail and historical and cultural information are also often included. Different kinds of guide books exist, focusing on different aspects of travel, fromadventure travel to relaxation, or aimed at travelers with different incomes, or focusing on sexual orientation or types of diet. Travel guides can also take the form oftravel websites.
A travel journal, also called road journal, is a record made by a traveller, sometimes in diary form, of the traveler's experiences, written during the course of the journey and later edited for publication. This is a long-established literary format; an early example is the writing ofPausanias (2nd century CE) who produced hisDescription of Greece based on his own observations.James Boswell published hisThe Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides in 1786 andGoethe published hisItalian Journey, based on diaries, in 1816. FrayIlarione da Bergamo[46] and FrayFrancisco de Ajofrín wrote travel accounts ofcolonial Mexico in the 1760s.Fannie Calderón de la Barca, the Scottish-born wife of the Spanish ambassador to Mexico 1839–1842, wroteLife in Mexico, an important travel narrative of her time there, with many observations of local life.
A British traveller,Mrs Alec Tweedie, published a number of travelogues, ranging from Denmark (1895) and Finland (1897), to the U.S. (1913), several on Mexico (1901, 1906, 1917), and one on Russia, Siberia, and China (1926). A more recent example isChe Guevara'sThe Motorcycle Diaries. A travelogue is afilm, book written up from a travel diary, or illustrated talk describing the experiences of and places visited by traveller.[47] American writerPaul Theroux has published many works of travel literature, the first success beingThe Great Railway Bazaar.
In addition to published travel journals, archive records show that it was historically common for travellers to record their journey in diary format, with no apparent intention of future publication, but as a personal record of their experiences. This practice is particularly visible in nineteenth-century European travel diaries.[48][49][50]
Anglo-AmericanBill Bryson is known forA Walk in the Woods, made into a Hollywoodfilm of the same name.[51]
The writings of escaped slaves of their experience under slavery and their escape from it is a type of travel literature that developed during the 18th and 19th centuries, detailing how slaves escaped therestrictive laws of the southern United States and the Caribbean to find freedom. As John Cox says inTraveling South, "travel was a necessary prelude to the publication of a narrative by a slave, for slavery could not be simultaneously experienced and written."[52]
A particularly famous slave travel narrative isFrederick Douglass' autobiographicalNarrative, which is deeply intertwined with his travel experiences, beginning with his travels being entirely at the command of his masters and ending with him traveling when and where he wishes.[53]Solomon Northup'sTwelve Years a Slave is a more traditional travel narrative, and he too overcomes the restrictions of law and tradition in the south to escape after he is kidnapped and enslaved.[54]Harriet Ann Jacobs'Incidents includes significant travel that covers a small distance, as she escapes one living situation for a slightly better one, but also later includes her escape from slavery to freedom in the north.[55]
Some fictional travel stories are related to travel literature. Although it may be desirable in some contexts to distinguishfictional fromnon-fictional works, such distinctions have proved notoriously difficult to make in practice, as in the famous instance of the travel writings ofMarco Polo orJohn Mandeville. Examples of fictional works of travel literature based on actual journeys are:
In the 21st century, travel literature became a genre ofsocial media in the form of travel blogs, with travel bloggers using outlets like personalblogs,Pinterest,Twitter,Facebook,Instagram andtravel websites to convey information about their adventures, and provide advice for navigating particular countries, or for traveling generally.[60] Travel blogs were among the first instances of blogging, which began in the mid-1990s.[60]
Notable travel bloggers includeMatthew Kepnes,Johnny Ward,[61] andDrew Binsky.[62][63]
The systematic study of travel literature emerged as a field of scholarly inquiry in the mid-1990s, with its own conferences, organizations, journals, monographs, anthologies, and encyclopedias. Important, pre-1995 monographs are:Abroad (1980) byPaul Fussell, anexploration of British interwar travel writing as escapism;Gone Primitive: Modern Intellects, Savage Minds (1990) by Marianna Torgovnick, an inquiry into theprimitivist presentations of foreign cultures;Haunted Journeys: Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing (1991) by Dennis Porter, a close look at the psychological correlatives of travel;Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing bySara Mills, an inquiry into the intersection of gender andcolonialism during the 19th century;Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992),Mary Louise Pratt's influential study ofVictorian travel writing's dissemination of a colonial mind-set; andBelated Travelers (1994), an analysis of colonial anxiety by Ali Behdad.[64]
Prizes awarded annually for travel books have included theThomas Cook Travel Book Award, which ran from 1980 to 2004, theBoardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, and theDolman Best Travel Book Award, which began in 2006. TheLowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards, which began in 1985, are given by the SATW Foundation, and include two awards for travel books and travel guidebooks, as well as awards for travel coverage in publications, websites, and broadcast and audio-visual formats, and for magazine, newspaper, and website articles in a variety of categories. TheNational Outdoor Book Awards also recognize travel literature in the outdoor and adventure areas, as do theBanff Mountain Book Awards. The North American Travel Journalists Association holds an annual awards competition honoring travel journalism in a multitude of categories, ranging across print and online media.[65]
Many others, with the same intent, have written about imaginary travels and journeys of theirs, telling of huge beasts, cruel men and strange ways of living.
