Travel, Sensibility and Gender: The Rhetoric of Female Travel Writing in Sophie Von La Roche's Tagebuch Einer Reise Durch Holland Und England

Abstract

AbstractThis article queries the traditionally held view that Sophie von La Roche's travel account of England, the Tagebuch einer Reise durch Holland und England (1788), was a purely sentimental, work. It offers a detailed examination of the rhetorical strategies used by La Roche to represent England to a German‐speaking readership and asks how these negotiated their way around notions of female inquiry and sentimentalised ‘female’ modes of writing. It examines first how La Roche used a variety of rhetorical devices, both sentimental and scientific, to locate her account within the shifting modes of representation in use in travel writing at the close of the eighteenth century. It assesses how these relate to her literary construction of herself as a woman travelling, the tensions that this created and the negotiations that this required. Secondly, it assesses the influence on La Roche's work of accounts by other female travellers to England, notably Marie Anne Ficquet du Boccage. Finally, it considers the importance of habitués of La Roche's salon such as Goethe and Georg Forster in influencing her viewing and representation of the foreign in her travelogue on England.