In Byron’s Footsteps, through Byron’s Eyes: Literary Tourism and ‘Imagined Geographies’ of Southern Albania

Abstract

ABSTRACT In his famous poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lord Byron represents Albania as an exotic and Oriental place, and as a suitable ‘stage’ for the ‘performance’ of adventurous travel. In this paper, I explore the various ways in which literary tourists following ‘in the footsteps of Lord Byron’ in Albania reproduce and/or challenge and change ‘imagined geographies’ of that country. This is carried out through discourse analysis of their written accounts of their travels. The texts analysed include published travelogues, newspaper travel articles and travel blogs written by those who have travelled through southern Albania ‘in the footsteps of Byron’. I argue that these tourists do not, in general, simply reproduce Byron influenced ‘imagined geographies’ of Albania in their travel writings but rather represent Albania as they find it, often highlighting the big differences between the Albania of Byron’s day and the Albania of today. And I also argue that, while some tourists find that the encroachment of modernity into the lands described by Byron disrupts their ability to perform ‘Byronic travel’, others find it quite possible to maintain a ‘Byronic’ spirit of travel in the Albania of today.