Travel Writing

Speaking in Tongues: Mary Kingsley’s Discourse in “Travels in West Africa”

by Karen Bennett

Máthesis, Vol.10, Viseu: Universidade Católica Editora, 2001. 103-126.

Mary Kingsley, Victorian spinster and travel writer, has always evaded categorisation. She shocked her contemporaries... more Mary Kingsley, Victorian spinster and travel writer, has always evaded categorisation. She shocked her contemporaries by venturing solo into remote parts of Africa and befriending the ‘natives’ in a way considered inappropriate at the time; yet she has equally offended the sensibilities of modern feminists and post-colonialists by her apparent espousal of some of the worst patriarchal and imperialist prejudices of the age. Attempts to make sense of her book Travels in West Africa have usually concluded, like Sara Mills, that ‘rather than being a “feminine” text or a “colonial” text, or for that matter a “feminist” text, [it] seems to be caught up in the contradictory clashes of these discourses one with another’.
I would like to argue, however, that the inconsistencies that are evident in Mary Kingsley’s discourse are due to her proficiency as a cultural translator. Her aim is, above all, to bring the worldview of the Other home to a variety of different publics; and the instability of her tone can be attributed to a remarkable communicative competence in addressing her different readers on their own terms, couching alternative perspectives in a language that her addressee can understand. As such, Travels in West Africa can be approached with some of the tools currently being employed in the discipline of Translation Studies, according to which translation is understood broadly as any act of cultural mediation and the significance of the translated text derives essentially from the role it plays in the target culture.

Discourses of Remembering: the Construction of Recollections in “Travels in West Africa”

by Karen Bennett

In Literature and Memory, Ansgar Nünning, Marion Gymnich, Roy Sommer (Eds.), Tübingen: Narr Francke Verlag, 2006. 281-291

Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa, first published in 1887, is a book constructed out of memories. It was... more Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa, first published in 1887, is a book constructed out of memories. It was published following the author’s return from two amazing lone voyages to the Congo and Camaroon, and although is vaguely categorised today as ‘Travel Writing’, it was not originally conceived as a coherent unified whole. Instead, it was patched together from a series of different texts, some of which were possibly written in situ (notebook jottings), others during moments of reflection in Africa (diary entries and letters), and yet others upon the author’s return to England (extracts from the lectures that she gave to institutions as diverse as the Cheltenham Ladies College, Manchester Chamber of Commerce and the Royal Geographical Society). Consequently, the final product bears traces of many different narrative voices. This paper examines the ways in which distance (temporal, geographical and social) conditions Kingsley’s memories of Africa. It looks at how those memories are construed in the various discourses according to the degree of elaboration demanded by the conventions governing each one, and focuses on the way in which the construction of identity (of the Self and Other) is affected by the implied presence of particular narratees.

Pages as Stages: A Performance Approach to Visitor Books

by Chaim Noy

This article deals with visitor books as a dynamic medium of communication, and explores how material aspects of such... more This article deals with visitor books as a dynamic medium of communication, and explores how material aspects of such a book including its physical affordances and the spatial and institutional environment in which it is located affect its capacity to create and mediate social meaning. In line with recent studies that set out to rematerialize communication and its devices, and, more specifically, to examine writing as an embodied communicative practice, it is argued that material considerations, while frequently overlooked, constitute preconditions of communication, and are organic to semiotic processes and formative in shaping them. The data analyzed are entries in, and observations on, a visitor book located in a war commemoration museum in East Jerusalem, Israel. It is demonstrated that, within the context of a national commemoration site, the visitor book proves to be a fascinating medium of inscriptive communication which is manipulated to serve as a cultural site of nationalist participation, commitment, and performance. The article draws on sensibilities from material and technological literature in order to shed light on the ways in which individuals interact with written environments and technologies.

Von Hannover in die Welt. Neue zu August Kestners Sizilien-Reise 1824

by Anne Viola Siebert

published in "Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter, Neue Folge, Band 65 (2011)

Sailors as Scribes: Travel Discourse and the (Con)textualization of the Khoikhoi at the Cape of Good Hope, 1649-90

by Henry Trotter

Journal of African Travel-Writing, 8 & 9 (2001): 30-44

Travel narratives have been one of the primary means by which Europeans learned about the rest of the world. This... more Travel narratives have been one of the primary means by which Europeans learned about the rest of the world. This paper examines how travel narratives concerning the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) from 1649 to 1690 utilized specific images of the Khoikhoi to serve either Dutch imperial intentions or a larger European cultural project. In both cases, writing was utilized as a technology of representation: texts served as tools in the construction of a Euro-managed Khoikhoi identity.

The paper is based on sailors' accounts. Between 1649 and 1690 at least eighty-eight reports of the Cape of Good Hope were written by sailors, many of them quoted by later academics and imperial strategists. This paper focuses on the most popular and representative of these writings. It first looks at how Khoikhoi were represented as "strategic shepherds", as herders who were seen as important assets in the Dutch colonial establishment at the Cape. It then investigates how travellers tapped into and enhanced the trope of the godless savage, extending this rather popular stereotype to Khoikhoi as part of European understanding of the "other". Finally it examines how local Cape peoples were valued as ethnographic specimens.

Navigating the Past: Sexuality, Race and the Uses of the Primitive in Magnus Hirschfeld’s Travel Writings

by Jana Funke

Forthcoming in Compelling Connections: Sexual Knowledge and Receptions of the Past. Eds. Kate Fisher and Rebecca Langlands (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Die Kunst des Reisens. Die Begegnung von europäischen Forschungsreisenden und Ostafrikanern in den Kontaktzonen des 19. Jahrhunderts

by Michael Pesek

Historicising the 'Big O.E.': New Approaches to New Zealand Tourists and Travel Writing Abroad

by Genevieve de Pont

'History Compass', 10, 3, 2012, pp.219-230

New Zealand scholars only began to focus on New Zealanders’ leisured travelling abroad in the last decade, far more... more New Zealand scholars only began to focus on New Zealanders’ leisured travelling abroad in the last decade, far more recently than scholars from other former British settler colonies commenced research on past travellers from their nations. New Zealand research sits within a nexus of popular assertions or stereotypes about the importance of travel for the development of New Zealand culture, and about the national characteristics of New Zealanders. This article outlines the trends which have emerged within this small pool of literature, and argues scholars who have researched the O.E., or overseas experience, have tended to look ‘inwards’ at pre-existing local understandings of the value of travel, while scholars considering other models of travel by New Zealanders have more often turned their attention ‘outwards’, using post-colonial frameworks. I argue that between these strands of scholarship lie many opportunities for further research on New Zealand international tourists and travel writers, and that this scholarship is necessary in order to adequately reflect upon the importance which has been attributed to New Zealanders’ travels by historians and public commentators.

'The Highland Harp: Lord Byron's Virtual Hebridean Tour'

by Andrew Wiseman

Scottish Islands Explorer (forthcoming)

Von Europa nach Afrika. Deutsche Passagiere auf der Dampferpassage in die Kolonie Deutsch-Ostafrika

by Michael Pesek

Jean-Michel Wissmer, La Poupée Katchina. Une Genevoise en Amérique (1949-1950), Slatkine, Genève, 2008

by Bertrand Levy

Book review by Bertrand Lévy, in : Le Globe, t. 148, 2008, 169-170.

A journey of a woman from Geneva through the United States in the 1950s A journey of a woman from Geneva through the United States in the 1950s

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES: 19th CENTURY EUROPEAN VIEWS OF THE OTTOMAN FRONTIER AS EXPERIENCED THROUGH SALT

by Seth King

    At the dawn of the 19th Century, the French Revolution took the Occident by surprise and re-introduced... more     At the dawn of the 19th Century, the French Revolution took the Occident by surprise and re-introduced it to the Orient by way of battles that occurred in Egypt. The Napoleonic campaign reminded the West of the "physical reality of the Holy Land," of which the memory had steadily faded since the days of the last crusades. The romantic idea of the Biblical land of Palestine held by the Occident inspired European adventurers to once again trek and roam over the Holy Land, where some would encounter Salt, a Transjordanian town on the fringe of a decaying Ottoman Empire. European travel narratives enable Salt to become the framework about which perspectives toward the Ottoman frontier evolved throughout the 19th century.

Voyage et littérature : l'Italie de Hermann Hesse

by Bertrand Levy

In : Le Globe, t. 151, 2011, 93-113.

Hermann Hesse ( 1877-1962 ) travelled through Northern and Central Italy in the early 1900s. We redraw his routes and... more Hermann Hesse ( 1877-1962 ) travelled through Northern and Central Italy in the early 1900s. We redraw his routes and examine the symbolic values associated with places and visited landscapes. His novelist’s approach (" Peter Camenzind ") is being compared with that of his travel diaries by relating his writing to his lived space. We compare his Germanic linguistic and cultural code with that of Jean Giono in its " Journey in Italy ".

Stories and (E)Motions: Travelling in Nicolas Bouvier’s Narratives

by Lénia Marques

Co-authored witth Maria Sofia Pimentel Biscaia.
Chapter published in:
Narratives of Travel and Tourism, ed. Jacqueline Tivers and Tijana Rakic, Ashgate, 2012, pp. 65-76.

[Excerpt from the Introduction of Chapter 7]

"In this chapter we will focus on the work of the Swiss... more [Excerpt from the Introduction of Chapter 7]

"In this chapter we will focus on the work of the Swiss traveller, Nicolas Bouvier (1929-1998), seeking to understand how motivations and, in particular, emotions, feelings, sensations and impressions experienced along the journey are artistically expressed. This study will focus firstly on the interrelationship between travelling/tourism and emotions in the work of one of the landmark writers of travel literature from the second half of the 20th century, and secondly on how this work has encouraged others to travel, write and express themselves by artistic means in the context of an interpretation of this emotional framework."

Een divertissant somertogje. Transport innovations and the rise of short-term pleasure trips in the Low Countries (1600-1750)

by Gerrit Verhoeven

Calvinist Pilgrimages and Popish Encounters: Religious Identity and Sacred Space on the Dutch Grand Tour (1598–1685)

by Gerrit Verhoeven

Una descrizione di Livorno nel 1785. La relazione di viaggio del Conte August Moszynski

by Guillaume Calafat

Published in 'Nuovi Studi Livornesi' 2010

This paper analyses the description of Livorno in 1785 through the travel narrative written by Polish count August... more This paper analyses the description of Livorno in 1785 through the travel narrative written by Polish count August Fryderyk Moszynski.

'A Defeated Empire Responds: Russian Travel Writing as a Means of Contesting the Post-Crimean War Political Space'.doc

by Bartley Rock

Die Rezeption der Religionsgemeinschaften des Osmanischen Reiches in der west- und mitteleuropäischen Reiseliteratur des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts. Prace Historyczne [in press]

by Mihailo Popovic

Un edificio científico para el Imperio de Maximiliano: El Museo Público de Historia Natural, Arqueología e Historia

by Rodrigo Antonio Vega y Ortega

Azuela, Luz Fernanda, Rodrigo Vega y Ortega y Raúl C. Nieto, en Celina Lértora (coord.), Geografía e Historia Natural: Hacia una historia comparada. Estudio desde Argentina, México, Costa Rica y Paraguay, Buenos Aires, Ediciones FEPAI, 2009, volumen II, pp. 101-124. ISBN: 978-950-9262-43-0. [Dictamen externo].