Non-Fiction Books:

Travel: A Literary History

Sorry, this product is not currently available to order

Here are some other products you might consider...

Travel: A Literary History

Click to share your rating 0 ratings (0.0/5.0 average) Thanks for your vote!

Format:

Hardback
Unavailable
Sorry, this product is not currently available to order

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. Writers covered include Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, Thomas Coryate, Captain Cook, T.E. Lawrence, and Christopher Columbus as well as Boswell and Johnson, Byron, Ruskin, Defoe, Conrad, and James. This book highlights over a hundred texts, showing how one motive for travelling has been succeeded by another, and how travel writing has often inhabited a strange borderland between truth and imagination, fact and fiction. It demonstrates how travel writers have slowly outgrown their traditional stance of superiority to all things `foreign', and have moved towards a deeper sensitivity to other lands and other cultures.

Author Biography

Peter Whitfield is the author of numerous books on a wide range of subjects, including maps, English poetry, and the history of science.
Release date Australia
December 18th, 2011
Audience
  • General (US: Trade)
Country of Publication
United Kingdom
Illustrations
18 Illustrations, black and white; 16 Plates, color
Imprint
Bodleian Library Publishing
Pages
336
Publisher
Bodleian Library Publishing
Year First Published
2011
Dimensions
156x234x30
ISBN-13
9781851243389
Product ID
10836356

Customer reviews

Nobody has reviewed this product yet. You could be the first!

Write a Review

Marketplace listings

There are no Marketplace listings available for this product currently.
Already own it? Create a free listing and pay just 9% commission when it sells!

Sell Yours Here

Help & options

Filed under...