Scientific vs. Sentimental Narrative in the Travels of William Bartram and Mungo Park

Abstract

There are two main modes of narrative that travel writers may apply in their writings: the scientific and the sentimental mode. These two modes seem to be totally distinct and incompatible. The aim of the present paper is to show that this is not really the case. To do so, the paper will discuss two important works of travel literature: William Bartram’s Travels of William Bartram (1791) and Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (1799). The main argument of the paper is that while Bartram's narrative is mainly scientific and that of Park is mainly sentimental, one may find in Bartram moments of sentimental narrative and other moments of the scientific narrative in Park. Such moments are equally, if not more, important. So, both writers are much more complex than simply to designate them as scientific and/or sentimental. The paper argues also that finding them to be scientific as well as sentimental entails so many consequences, one of which is that their claim of disinterestedness is not totally true. Both writers switch from one mode of narrative to another in order to obscure their colonialist aims. On the one hand, Bartram’s scientific observations are sometimes implicitly shaped by his race and gender as a white male. On the other, Park’s sentimentality cannot hide his colonial interests. Having said so, however, both writers try to suggest a link between the outside world of nature and the inside world of mankind in order to emphasize their belief in the theory of monogenesis which advocates the common origin of all human beings..