Introduction: Travelling Texts in Spain and Spanish America

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes [1] The author is grateful to all the contributors to this special issue for their patience during the process of its development and to the following people for their support and guidance in terms of both the conference project and in the production of this issue: Catherine Davies, Graham Huggan, Bart Moore-Gilbert, David Murphy, Terry O'Reilly, Philip Swanson, and Jason Wilson. [2] See also Beardsell (2000 Beardsell, P. 2000. Europe and Latin America: Returning the Gaze, Manchester: Manchester University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 20–39). [3] Indeed, Michel de Certeau (1990 De Certeau, M. 1990 [1980]. L'invention du quotidien, vol. 1: Arts de faire, Paris: Gallimard. [Google Scholar], p. 206) has declared that every narrative is a travel narrative. [4] For example, Columbus's journals have inspired a plethora of debate, in works such as Henige (1991 Henige, D. 1991. In Search of Columbus: The Sources for the First Voyage, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. [Google Scholar]), Greenblatt (1991 Greenblatt, S. 1991. Marvellous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), and Zamora (1993 Zamora, M. 1993. Reading Columbus, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). For just some examples of the writing of other colonial and post-independence travellers in Latin America, see Leonard (1972 Leonard, I. A. 1972. Colonial Travellers in Latin America, New York: Knopf. [Google Scholar]) and Stephens (1842 Stephens, J. 1842. Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán, London: J. Murray. [Google Scholar]). [5] See also, on the same period and travellers, Mejía Pérez (2004 Mejía Pérez, A. 2004. A Geography of Hard Times: Narrative about Travel to South America, 1780–1849, New York: State University of New York Press. [Google Scholar]). [6] For an anthology of travel writing in Spain/by Spanish travellers, see Gómez Mendoza (1988 Gómez Mendoza, J. 1988. Viajeros y paisajes, Madrid: Alianza. [Google Scholar]). There are critical essays on Spanish travellers/travel writers in Burdett and Duncan (2002 Burdett, C. and Duncan, D., eds. 2002. Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the 1930s, London and New York: Berghahn. [Google Scholar]) and David Henn has written extensively on travel writing in Spain, especially on the travel writing of Camilo José Cela and Emilia Pardo Bazán, mostly recently in Henn (2004 Henn, D. 2004. Old Spain and New Spain: The Travel Narratives of Camilo José Cela, Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses. [Google Scholar]). For an overview of travel writing in/on Latin America, see Wilson (1987 Wilson, J. 1987. “Travel Literature”. In Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, Edited by: Smith, Verity. 803Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. [Google Scholar]); see Tavera Alfaro (1984 Tavera Alfaro, J., ed. 1984. Viajes en Mexico: crónicas mexicanas, Vol. I, Mexico: FCE. [Google Scholar]) for an anthology of travel writings on Mexico and Zamudio (2004 Zamudio, L. E., ed. 2004. Espacio, viajes y viajeros, Mexico: Aldus/Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana - Iztapalapa. [Google Scholar]) for recent critical approaches to travel writing in/on that country. See Lindsay and Youngs (2003 Lindsay, C. and Youngs, T., eds. 2003. Studies in Travel Writing vol. 7, no. 1 (Latin American Travel Writing) [Google Scholar]) for critical essays on Latin American travel writing.