Travel
Subtitle: a literary history
By: Peter Whitfield
Publisher: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; Bodleian Library
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Oxford
Language: eng
Number of pages: 303
ISBN-13: 9781851243389
Subjects: History and criticism; Travelers' writings; Travel in literature
Description: 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.
Notes: Maps on lining papers.

Includes bibliographical references and index.