Travel Literature Essay

6965 Words28 Pages
Chapter I Introductory Travel Literature: The Legacy and the Vogue Travel literature is one of the controversial issues that happened to preoccupy literary critics, theorists and historians, from times immemorial. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that such thinkers are divided among themselves as to the “literary” merit of this kind of intellectual and artistic activity that entails observation, analysis and the artistic translation of the traveller’s experience in a certain land and within a certain social milieu. But no matter how incongruent literary theorists may be on this topic, and irrespective of the absence of a standard definition of this kind of literature, one may always keep in mind that some of the most ancient epics in human history can be categorized within this vague and hazy basket, denominated as travel literature; hence the epic of Gilgamesh of ancient Mesopotamia. No less significant is the fact that major literary figures such as Herman Melville (1819-1891), Mark Twain (1835-1910) and Charles Doughty (1843-1926), to mention only a few, did try their hands in writing travelogues that are still remembered with much affection and recalled with warmth. But in spite of this kind of vagueness concerning the real literary value of travel accounts, one is bound to consult some of the major opinions and attitudes relevant to this topic. A.C. Ward believes that travel literature is a difficult literary form that depends in its uniqueness “upon the character and vision of the traveller” more than the “strangeness or remoteness of locality”i. Edward W. Said, on the other hand, sees travel literature as a literary form in which the traveller’s consciousness is represented as “the principal authority, an active point of energy that made sense not just of colonizing activities but of exotic geographies and peoples.”ii James
Open Document