Literature | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Oral literature | ||||||
Major written forms | ||||||
| ||||||
Prose genres | ||||||
| ||||||
Poetry genres | ||||||
| ||||||
Dramatic genres | ||||||
History | ||||||
Lists and outlines | ||||||
Theory and criticism | ||||||
Literatureportal | ||||||
The genre of travel literature or travelogue encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. [1]
One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern period, James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786) helped shape travel memoir as a genre.
Early examples of travel literature include the Periplus 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) by Nasir Khusraw (1003-1077), the Journey Through Wales (1191) and Description of Wales (1194) by Gerald of Wales, and the travel journals of Ibn Jubayr (1145–1214), Marco Polo (1254–1354), and Ibn 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 medieval Arabic literature. [3]
In China, 'travel record literature' (Chinese :遊記文學; pinyin :yóujì wénxué) became popular during the Song dynasty (960–1279). [4] Travel writers such as Fan Chengda (1126–1193) and Xu Xiake (1587–1641) incorporated a wealth of geographical and topographical information into their writing, while the 'daytrip essay' Record of Stone Bell Mountain by the noted poet and statesman Su 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, including narratives, prose, essays and diaries, although most were written in prose. [5] Zhou Daguan's account of Cambodia in the thirteenth century is among the major sources for the city of Angkor 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, is Petrarch'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 called frigida incuriositas ("a cold lack of curiosity"). He then wrote about his climb, making allegorical comparisons between climbing the mountain and his own moral progress in life. [6] [7]
Michault Taillevent , a poet for the Duke of Burgundy, travelled through the Jura 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 of Petit Jehan de Saintre, climbed to the crater of a volcano in the Lipari 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 his Livre 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 the Novus Orbis ("New World") by Simon Grynaeus, and collections by Ramusio and Richard Hakluyt. [10] 16th century travelers to Persia included the brothers Robert Shirley and Anthony Shirley, and for India Duarte Barbosa, Ralph Fitch, Ludovico di Varthema, Cesare Federici, and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten. [10] Humanist travellers in Europe also produced accounts, often noting monuments and inscriptions, e.g., Seyfried Rybisch's Itinerarium (1570s), Michel de Montaigne's Journal de voyage (1581), Germain Audebert's Voyage d'Italie (1585) and Aernout van Buchel's Iter Italicum (1587–1588). [11]
In the 18th century, travel literature was commonly known as "books of travels", which mainly consisted of maritime diaries. [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 social satire imitating one, and Captain James Cook's diaries (1784) were the equivalent of today's best-sellers. [14] Alexander von Humboldt's Personal 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, including Charles Darwin.
Other later examples of travel literature include accounts of the Grand 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 was Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) with An Inland Voyage (1878), and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), about his travels in the Cévennes (France), is among the first popular books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities, and tells of commissioning one of the first sleeping bags. [15] [16] [17] [18]
Other notable writers of travel literature in the 19th century include the Russian Ivan Goncharov, who wrote about his experience of a tour around the world in Frigate "Pallada" (1858), and Lafcadio Hearn, who interpreted the culture of Japan with insight and sensitivity. [19]
The 20th century's interwar period has been described as a heyday of travel literature when many established writers such as Graham Greene, Robert Byron, Rebecca West, Freya Stark, Peter Fleming and Evelyn 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 as Bruce 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 the documentary, to the literary, as well as the journalistic, and from memoir to the humorous to the serious. They are often associated with tourism and include guide 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 of memoir, non-fiction, and occasionally even fiction 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 as blogs and vlogs 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-century newspapers. Short stories genre of that era were influenced directly and significantly by the travelogues that shared many traits with short stories. Authors generally, especially Henry James and Guy de Maupassant, frequently wrote travelogues and short tales concurrently, often using the same countries as their settings.
Travel literature often intersects with philosophy or essay writing, as in V. S. Naipaul's India: A Wounded Civilization (1976), whose trip became the occasion for extended observations on a nation and people. This is similarly the case in Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), [23] focused on her journey through Yugoslavia, and in Robin 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 in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) or Robert M. Pirsig's Zen 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 include Lawrence Durrell's Bitter Lemons (1957), Bruce Chatwin's widely acclaimed In Patagonia (1977) and The Songlines (1987), [25] Deborah Tall's The Island of the White Cow: Memories of an Irish Island (1986), [26] and Peter Mayle's best-selling A Year in Provence (1989) and its sequels.
Travel and nature writing merge in many of the works by Sally Carrighar, Gerald Durrell and Ivan T. Sanderson. Sally Carrighar's works include One Day at Teton Marsh (1965), Home to the Wilderness (1973), and Wild Heritage (1965). Gerald Durrell's My 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 of Corfu 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 with Birds, Beasts, and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods (1978).
Ivan T. Sanderson published Animal Treasure, a report of an expedition to the jungles of then-British West Africa; Caribbean Treasure, an account of an expedition to Trinidad, Haiti, and Surinam, begun in late 1936 and ending in late 1938; and Living Treasure, an account of an expedition to Jamaica, British Honduras (now Belize) and the Yucatán. These authors are naturalists, who write in support of their fields of study.
Another naturalist, Charles Darwin, wrote his famous account of the journey of HMS Beagle 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 are Samuel Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775); Charles Dickens' American Notes for General Circulation (1842); Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796); Hilaire Belloc's The Path To Rome (1902); D. H. Lawrence's Twilight in Italy and Other Essays (1916); Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays (1927); Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941); and John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962). [28]
The Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom is a prolific travel writer. Among his many travel books is the acclaimed Roads to Santiago . [29] Englishmen Eric Newby, [30] H. V. Morton, the Americans Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux, and Welsh author Jan Morris are or were widely acclaimed as travel writers (though Morris has frequently claimed herself as a writer of 'place' rather than travel per se). [31] Canadian travel writer Robin 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 the Main Library the Bill Bryson Library for his contributions as the university's 11th chancellor (2005–11). [34] [35] Paul Theroux was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast , which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name. He was also awarded in 1989 the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for Riding the Iron Rooster.
In 2005, Jan Morris was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English 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 book Les 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 sailing Frank Cowper's Sailing Tours (1892–1896) [39] and Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World (1900) are classics of outdoor adventure literature. [40]
In April 1895, Joshua Slocum set sail from Boston, Massachusetts and in Sailing Alone Around the World, [41] he described his departure in the following manner:
More than three years later, Slocum returned to Newport, Rhode Island, having circumnavigated the world on June 27, 1898. [42] [43]
A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place, designed for the use of visitors or tourists". [44] An early example is Thomas West's guide to the English Lake District, published in 1778. [45] Thomas West, an English priest, popularized the idea of walking for pleasure in his guide to the Lake 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. [46]
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. [47] Published in 1778 the book was a major success. [48]
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, from adventure 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 of travel 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 of Pausanias (2nd century CE) who produced his Description of Greece based on his own observations. James Boswell published his The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides in 1786 and Goethe published his Italian Journey , based on diaries, in 1816. Fray Ilarione da Bergamo [49] and Fray Francisco de Ajofrín wrote travel accounts of colonial Mexico in the 1760s. Fannie Calderón de la Barca, the Scottish-born wife of the Spanish ambassador to Mexico 1839–1842, wrote Life 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 is Che Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries . A travelogue is a film, book written up from a travel diary, or illustrated talk describing the experiences of and places visited by traveller. [50] American writer Paul Theroux has published many works of travel literature, the first success being The 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. [51] [52] [53]
Anglo-American Bill Bryson is known for A Walk in the Woods , made into a Hollywood film of the same name. [54]
There is no specific format for a travel journal, it typically includes details and reflections about an individual's experiences, observations, and emotions during the journey. Some of the common details in the journal include:
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 the restrictive laws of the southern United States and the Caribbean to find freedom. As John Cox says in Traveling South, "travel was a necessary prelude to the publication of a narrative by a slave, for slavery could not be simultaneously experienced and written." [58]
A particularly famous slave travel narrative is Frederick Douglass' autobiographical Narrative , 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. [59] Solomon Northup's Twelve 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. [60] 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. [61]
Some fictional travel stories are related to travel literature. Although it may be desirable in some contexts to distinguish fictional from non-fictional works, such distinctions have proved notoriously difficult to make in practice, as in the famous instance of the travel writings of Marco Polo or John Mandeville. Examples of fictional works of travel literature based on actual journeys are:
In the 21st century, travel literature became a genre of social media in the form of travel blogs, with travel bloggers using outlets like personal blogs, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and travel websites to convey information about their adventures, and provide advice for navigating particular countries, or for traveling generally. [66] Travel blogs were among the first instances of blogging, which began in the mid-1990s. [66]
Notable travel bloggers include Matthew Kepnes, Johnny Ward, [67] and Drew Binsky. [68] [69]
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) by Paul Fussell, an exploration of British interwar travel writing as escapism; Gone Primitive: Modern Intellects, Savage Minds (1990) by Marianna Torgovnick, an inquiry into the primitivist 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 by Sara Mills, an inquiry into the intersection of gender and colonialism during the 19th century; Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), Mary Louise Pratt's influential study of Victorian travel writing's dissemination of a colonial mind-set; and Belated Travelers (1994), an analysis of colonial anxiety by Ali Behdad. [70]
Prizes awarded annually for travel books have included the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, which ran from 1980 to 2004, the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award, which began in 2006. The Lowell 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. The National Outdoor Book Awards also recognize travel literature in the outdoor and adventure areas, as do the Banff 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. [71]
An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme sports. Adventures are often undertaken to create psychological arousal or in order to achieve a greater goal, such as the pursuit of knowledge that can only be obtained by such activities.
Dervish Mehmed Zillî, known as Evliya Çelebi, was an Ottoman explorer who travelled through the territory of the Ottoman Empire and neighboring lands during the empire's cultural zenith. He travelled for over 40 years, recording his commentary in a travelogue called the Seyahatnâme. The name Çelebi is an honorific meaning "gentleman" or "man of God".
The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank when they had come of age. The custom—which flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transport in the 1840s and was associated with a standard itinerary—served as an educational rite of passage. Though it was primarily associated with the British nobility and wealthy landed gentry, similar trips were made by wealthy young men of other Protestant Northern European nations, and, from the second half of the 18th century, by some South and North Americans.
Riḥla refers to both a journey and the written account of that journey, or travelogue. It constitutes a genre of Arabic literature. Associated with the medieval Islamic notion of "travel in search of knowledge", the riḥla as a genre of medieval and early-modern Arabic literature usually describes a journey taken with the intent of performing the Hajj, but can include an itinerary that vastly exceeds that original route. The classical riḥla in medieval Arabic travel literature, like those written by Ibn Battuta and Ibn Jubayr, includes a description of the "personalities, places, governments, customs, and curiosities" experienced by the traveler, and usually within the boundaries of the Muslim world. However, the term rihla can be applied to other Arabic travel narratives describing journeys taken for reasons other than pilgrimage; for instance, the 19th–century riḥlas of Muhammad as-Saffar and Rifa'a al-Tahtawi both follow conventions of the riḥla genre by recording not only the journey to France from Morocco and Egypt, respectively, but also their experiences and observations.
A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place designed for the use of visitors or tourists". It will usually include information about sights, accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying detail and historical and cultural information are often included. Different kinds of guide books exist, focusing on different aspects of travel, from adventure travel to relaxation, or aimed at travelers with different incomes, or focusing on sexual orientation or types of diet.
Outdoor literature is a literature genre about or involving the outdoors. Outdoor literature encompasses several different subgenres including exploration literature, adventure literature, mountain literature and nature writing. Another subgenre is the guide book, an early example of which was Thomas West's guide to the Lake District published in 1778. The genres can include activities such as exploration, survival, sailing, hiking, mountaineering, whitewater boating, geocaching or kayaking, or writing about nature and the environment. Travel literature is similar to outdoor literature but differs in that it does not always deal with the out-of-doors, but there is a considerable overlap between these genres, in particular with regard to long journeys.
Sarah Kemble Knight was an American teacher and businesswoman, who is remembered for a brief diary of a journey from Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, to New York City, Province of New York, in 1704–1705, which provides us with one of the few first-hand-accounts of travel conditions in Connecticut during colonial times.
Jelena Dimitrijević was a Serbian short story writer, novelist, poet, traveller, social worker, feminist, and a polyglot. She is considered to be the first woman in modern Serbian history to publish a work of travel related prose in 1894. During the years 1926 to 1927 she traveled around the world, including the Far East, East Asia, and India, where she was the guest of Rabindranath Tagore.
Down Under is the British title of a 2000 travelogue book about Australia written by best-selling travel writer Bill Bryson. In the United States and Canada it was published titled In a Sunburned Country, a title taken from the famous Australian poem, "My Country". It was also published as part of Walk About, which included Down Under and another of Bryson's books, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, in one volume.
Santhosh George Kulangara is an Indian traveller, television producer, director, broadcaster, editor, and publisher. He is the founder and managing director of Safari TV, a channel dedicated to travel and history-based programmes. Kulangara also serves as the head of Labour India Publications, an educational publisher for school children. As of 2021, Kulangara had travelled to more than 130 countries and his journeys are telecast through Sancharam, the first travel documentary in Malayalam.
A travel documentary is a documentary film, television program, or online series that describes travel in general or tourist attractions without recommending particular package deals or tour operators. A travelogue film is an early type of travel documentary, serving as an exploratory ethnographic film. Ethnographic films have been made for the spectators to see the other half to relate with the world in relative relations. These films are a spectacle to see beyond the cultural differences as explained by the Allison Griffith in her journal. Before the 1930s, it was difficult to see the importance of documentary films in Hollywood cinema but the 1930s brought about a change in the history of these films with the popularity of independent filmmakers.
Kira Salak is an American writer, adventurer, and journalist known for her travels in Mali and Papua New Guinea. She has written two books of nonfiction and a book of fiction based on her travels and is a contributing editor at National Geographic magazine.
Anthony Sattin FRGS is a British journalist, broadcaster and travel writer. His main areas of interest is the Middle East and Africa, particularly Egypt, and he has lived and travelled extensively in these regions.
Lawrence George Green was a South African journalist and writer. Eschewing any grandiose view of his literature and his way of life, he wrote for the layman and general reading entertainment as a raconteur. As such his writings, though well populated with researched fact through his wide travels and many hours of research in the South African and British archives, do not constitute in any strict sense historical or academic reference works. Nevertheless, he remains frequently cited as a recorder of little remembered or noted fact of some historical or cultural significance in the southern African domain.
Santanu Kumar Acharya is a National Sahitya Academy Award-winning Indian writer.
Vijay Menon is an American writer of Indian descent.
Travelogues of Latin America are published accounts describing Latin America and the Caribbean by foreign travelers from early Iberian conquest to the early 20th century. The Spanish and Portuguese monarchs' efforts to restrict non-Iberian's access to Latin America during the colonial era mean that most of the works published before 1800 were by authorized Spanish or Portuguese chroniclers, or European Catholic missionaries. However, the popularity of Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt's twenty-one volume account of his travels in Latin America marked a turning point. Starting in the 1820s, most independent Latin American governments welcomed increased exchanges with European visitors, increasing the number of German, British, French, and U.S. travelogues published. Many foreigners were interested in economic opportunities available in Latin America. At least 394 travelogues describing Mexico were published between 1810 and 1910. For Brazil, European and U.S. visitors published at least 158 travelogues between 1800 and 1899.
Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria is a 2012 non-fiction memoir and travelogue by Noo Saro-Wiwa. In it Saro-Wiwa travels across Nigeria, re-discovering the country of her birth. The book has been compared to those of many other diasporic writers.
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.