European Travel Literature Research Articles

The Generation of ‘The Wandering Years’ – Traveling culture in Europe and in Hungary between the World Wars

In my article, I try to offer a comparative view of Western European and Hungarian travel literature between the World Wars. First, I examine the changes of Western traveling culture in the post-war era, then I analyze the narrato-poetic features of the travelogue, as a popular literary genre of the 1920s and 1930s. In the second chapter of my study, I introduce the Hungarian contemporaries of Waugh, Green, or Orwell. They were the generation of ‘the wandering years’, as it was called by one of them, Antal Szerb. I argue, that the main questions of the Hungarian travelers and narrative characteristics of their works not just simply resemble to the Western authors’, but they could give a relevant contribution to the contemporary European travel literature, emphasizing the integration of the thinking of Hungarian intellectuals to the European stream.

L’ambiguità del teonimo poliano Natigay-Načigay

This contribution offers an in-depth discussion of the Polian theonym Natigay-Načigay, highlighting its relation with theonyms and shamanistic terms occurring in the European travel literature and/or in Turkic and Mongolic sources.

Imaginary perceptions and representations of the ancient Greek monument in the engravings of European travel literature (17th - 19th centuries)

Με πυρήνα ορισμένα χαρακτικά από τις συλλογές του Μουσείου Μπενάκη και τη σημαντική Συλλογή Ευστάθιου Ι. Φινόπουλου το άρθρο αυτό διερευνά πώς μορφοποιείται η φαντασιακή πρόσληψη του αρχαίου ελληνικού μνημείου σε εικόνες των ευρωπαϊκών περιηγητικών εκδόσεων από τον 17ο έως τον 19ο αιώνα. Η μυθολογία του ερειπίου σφραγίζει τη σχέση της Ευρώπης με την ελληνορωμαϊκή αρχαιότητα μέσα στους αιώνες, με πολλαπλές εκφάνσεις στην τέχνη και γενικότερα στον πολιτισμό. Η Ρώμη με το πλήθος των μνημείων της κατέχει πρωταγωνιστικό ρόλο, μάλιστα αποτελεί πολυδύναμο σημείο αναφοράς και για τις απεικονίσεις "ελληνικών" μνημείων τον 17ο-18ο αιώνα με προεκτάσεις και στον 19ο. Ορισμένα χαρακτικά με αυθαίρετες συσσωρεύσεις ερειπίων —σε ολλανδικές κυρίως εκδόσεις του 17ου αιώνα- έχουν ασφαλώς τις καταβολές τους σε έργα με ρωμαϊκές αρχαιότητες φιλοτεχνημένα από καλλιτέχνες των Κάτω Χωρών, που εργάστηκαν στη Ρώμη κατά τον 16ο αιώνα. Σε όλες αυτές τις εικόνες ένας ολόκληρος κόσμος που έχει καταρρεύσει υποβάλλει την ιδέα του χρόνου που καταστρέφει τα πάντα, ενώ οι ανθρώπινες φιγούρες υποδηλώνουν το ουμανιστικό ενδιαφέρον για τη μελέτη των αρχαίων λειψάνων προκειμένου να αποκωδικοποιηθούν τα μυστικά τους. Κατά τον 18ο αιώνα η Ρώμη με τη μεγαλειώδη αρχιτεκτονική σκηνογραφία της -αρχαία και νεότερη- ασκεί στη λόγια Ευρώπη μαγνητική έλξη, που εκδηλώνεται και με το πλήθος των απεικονίσεων της "αιώνιας πόλης", οι οποίες είναι ιδιαίτερα δημοφιλείς. Η ιταλική ζωγραφική και χαρακτική των ερειπίων —με κορυφαίους εκπροσώπους της τον G. Ρ. Panini και τον G. Β. Piranesi αντίστοιχα, οι ρωμαϊκές vedute ideate (φανταστικές τοπογραφικές απόψεις) και τα αρχιτεκτονικά "καπρίτσια" θα αποτελέσουν το κύριο πρότυπο –με συνεπίκουρο τη γαλλική ζωγραφική αυτής της θεματικής- για τα χαρακτικά με φανταστικές ή και πραγματικές ελληνικές αρχαιότητες, όπως φαίνεται από την αυθαίρετη γειτνίαση ετερόκλητων μνημείων, αγαλμάτων και αγγείων σε ένα πλασματικό χώρο, τη σκηνοθεσία της σύνθεσης, το Staffage, την εκφραστική χρήση της φωτοσκίασης, τη διαλεκτική σχέση της φυσης και των έργων του ανθρώπου. Οι αρχαιότητες ως "θέαμα", μέσα στο κομψό αισθητικό κλίμα του 18ου αιώνα, με πινελιές ροκοκό, όπου εγγράφεται και το αίτημα για τη γραφικότητα (το pittoresque). Παράλληλα, αυτές οι εικόνες εκφέρουν λόγο και για το sublime: για τον "υψηλό" χαρακτήρα και το ευγενικό μεγαλείο των ελληνορωμαϊκών έργων, μέσα στο πνεύμα του Νεοκλασικισμού, όπου αναπτύχτηκε και η λατρεία (culte) του αρχαίου έργου-αντικειμένου τέχνης σε συνάρτηση με την αρχαιογνωσία της εποχής και τις ανασκαφές Το εντυπωσιακό μέγεθος, άρρηκτα συνδεδεμένο με το μνημειακό μεγαλείο, συνιστά τότε έναν όρο για τη δοξαστική, συγκινησιακά φορτισμένη αντιμετώπιση των αρχαιοτήτων καθώς και για την οπτική πρόσληψη τους, με άμεση επίπτωση στη διαχείριση τους ως εικόνων. Από την άποψη αυτή τα χαρακτικά του Γάλλου αρχιτέκτονα Le Roy είναι παραδειγματικά για τον ελληνικό χώρο. Στο α μισό του 19ου αιώνα, όταν η νεότερη, υπαρκτή Ελλάδα έρχεται στο προσκήνιο, τα ιδεολογικά και αισθητικά φίλτρα του Ρομαντισμού, του Οριενταλισμού και του Φιλελληνισμού θα επηρεάσουν τις αναπαραστάσεις του αρχαίου ελληνικού μνημείου στα χαρακτικά των περιηγητών, και όχι μόνο. Το ρεπερτόριο των αρχαιοτήτων "εξελληνίζεται", με αναγνωρίσιμα πλέον, πραγματικά μνημεία και έργα τέχνης, και μάλιστα αυτά στα οποία πέφτουν οι προβολείς (Ακρόπολη, Ελγίνεια, Καρυάτιδες). Η νέα θεματική προϋποθέτει και απαιτεί άλλα πρότυπα (βλ. π.χ. την έγκυρη έκδοση των Stuart και Revett). Επιβιώνουν όμως ακόμη μορφοπλαστικοί τρόποι και εικονογραφικά μοτίβα της παλαιότερης παράδοσης, της ζωγραφικής και χαρακτικής των ερειπίων του 18ου αιώνα. Το διπολικό σχήμα πραγματικότητας και φαντασίας παρουσιάζει ξεχωριστό ενδιαφέρον στις εικαστικές εκδοχές του. Η προσέγγιση αυτού του πολυδιάστατου θέματος εστιάστηκε σε κάποιες χαρακτηριστικές πτυχές του, με άξονα τις δύο συντεταγμένες του: την εικονογραφία και τη μορφολογία των έργων, που και οι δύο, ισότιμα σχεδόν, αναδεικνύουν την πολυσημία του, ενώ παράλληλα καταδεικνύουν τον ευρύ ορίζοντα έρευνας που υπαγορεύει η μελέτη αυτού του υλικού. Έμφαση δόθηκε στον 18ο αιώνα (πιο συγκεκριμένα στο β' μισό του), εποχή ιδιαίτερα σημαντική για τη σχέση της Ευρώπης με την κλασική αρχαιότητα, μέσα από τη συνεργία ποικίλων παραγόντων. Ανάμεσα τους, η άμεση επαφή πολυάριθμων λογίων, καλλιτεχνών, πλούσιων και φιλότεχνων Ευρωπαίων με τα απτά ίχνη του αρχαίου κόσμου στη Ρώμη κυρίως, υπήρξε καταλυτική. Μπορεί μάλιστα να υποστηριχτεί ότι αυτή λειτούργησε και ως μοχλός για τη δόμηση μιας φαντασιακής πρόσληψης της ελληνικής αρχαιότητας.

A Missing Link in European Travel Literature: Burchard of Mount Sion's Description of Egypt

This article offers a first study and edition of Burchard of Mount Sion’s ‘Egyptian section’. This text—hitherto almost completely neglected by scholars—provides a detailed account of Egypt, and is preserved in its entirety in two manuscripts, following Burchard’s Descriptio Terrae Sanctae. The present work provides an analysis of the contents and characteristics of this text, of the cultural context in which it was composed, and of its reception in medieval and early modern times. Appendix 1 includes a provisional edition of Burchard’s account of Egypt. Appendix 2 offers an edition of the final part of a shortened version of this text which is significant from the point of view of the history of its reception.

The Medieval Invention of Travel by Shayne Aaron Legassie

Reviewed by: The Medieval Invention of Travel by Shayne Aaron Legassie Anna Wilson shayne aaron legassie, The Medieval Invention of Travel. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. xiii, 302. isbn: 978–0–226–44662–2. $34.95. This ambitious book surveys western European travel literature from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, tracing the emergence in the medieval period of several styles, themes, and ethics of travel that would shape subsequent travel literatures until the industrial revolution. Legassie makes an argument for a distinct medieval genre of travel literature that includes two mutually influential strands: accounts of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and of journeys to the far east for missionary purposes or trade. The methodology is primarily literary-critical, but there is a strong book history element throughout, wherein Legassie highlights specific material instances of works [End Page 115] in order to enhance close readings or to discuss the circulation and use of ideas about travel. The story this book tells is broadly one of historical development of the travel literature genre prior to its oft-presumed emergence with the early modern European colonial expansions; however, Legassie avoids a teleological narrative in favor of a 'rhizomatic' survey, making the important but frequently overlooked point that 'developments accrete and—at times—coexist unharmoniously' in this as in so many literary genres (p. 143). As such, the study is divided into three parts linked by theme rather than location in time or space. Part one focuses on constructions of narrative authority. Chapter one traces the differing approaches to the 'prestige economy of long-distance knowledge' (p. 22)—a concept Legassie develops in conversation with anthropologist Mary Helms' 'long-distance specialist'—in Marco Polo's Divisament dou monde and William of Rubruck's Itinerarium. Chapter two argues for an increasing emphasis on the labor and physical trials of travel by authors who apparently feared that their narratives might strain the credulity of their medieval readers; texts discussed here include John of Plano Carpini's Historia Mongolorum, Odoric of Pordenone's Relatio, and The Book of John Mandeville. Part two is a valuable and extensive survey of medieval pilgrimage literature, including clerical- and non-clerical narratives, Jerusalem Inventories, and logs or diaries. In chapter four, Legassie argues that these texts attest to a sophisticated mnemonic praxis—he draws heavily on Carruthers' classic studies on memory—through which pilgrimage becomes 'literate labor.' In what Legassie names 'the synthetic tradition' of (largely clerical) pilgrimage accounts, the composition of the text is part of the devotional work of pilgrimage, accomplished through 'memory work' before, during, and after the journey. The readings of these texts complement, but would benefit from greater engagement with, recent scholarship on 'virtual travel' or pilgrimage meditation by scholars such as Anthony Bale and Kathryn Rudy. Chapter five tackles the role of empirical observation in pilgrimage literature, tracing the rise in interest in writers' investigative methods for determining the history of places and objects in the Holy Land, and the rise of the 'Mediterranean turn' wherein places on the way to the Holy Land and the journey itself become subjects of scrutiny. Part three enters into the divergent styles of travel emerging post-1300, with a chapter on Petrarch and a chapter on Pero Tafur. Legassie's reading of Petrarch's travel letters in Familiares I–V and his Itinerarium reveals Petrarch's careful curation of a narrative arc that encompasses his change from an optimistic to jaded attitude to the ethical value of travel, corresponding to his changing political attitudes to Italian nationalism, and to his rejection of vernacular poetical modes for Latin epic. Legassie's intriguing approach to Petrarch's epistolary work as 'diasporic' rather than 'exilic' makes this a valuable addition to scholarship on Petrarch's relatively understudied travel letters. Chapter seven brings to the fore a theme which has run through much of the other travel literature Legassie discusses: concern with the ethics of travel. In Pero Tafur's fifteenth-century travel narrative, this concern is played out in the tension between the text's need to present Muslim lands as hostile territories in order to enhance the dramatic daring of its hero, and its investment...

Domorodé národy Floridy podľa stredoeurópskych cestopisov zo 16. storočia

Správy prvých Európanov, ktorí sa stretli v 16. storočí s pôvodnými americkými kultúrami podliehali viacnásobnej štylizácii. Na jednej strane, to bolo presvedčenie o univerzálnom stavovskom type kultúry s kráľom, šľachtou a poddanými, ako to poznali z Európy. Zároveň to bolo doplnené predstavami o krvilačných divochoch a kanibaloch, nemajúcich plný status ľudskosti.Jacquesovi Le Moyne de Morgues a Theodorovi de Bry slúži ku cti, že sa v cestopisoch o objavovaní Floridy snažili podať čo najobjektívnejší pohľad na tamojšiu indiánsku kultúru v textovej i obrazovej časti. Ani výber ilustrácií v knihe nie je sústredený iba na oblasť extrémnych javov v kultúrnom konflikte medzi európskou civilizáciou a domorodcami. Časť medirytín je zameraných na zobrazenie každodenného života - spôsob lovu, prípravy potravy, liečenia chorých, obrábanie pôdy.Pre čitateľa 16. storočia patrila k najdôležitejším témam otázka, akým svetom vôbec sú novoobjavené krajiny, či bytosti, ktoré ho obývajú sú ľudia, alebo nejaké monštrá. Druhou najdôležitejšou otázkou bol spôsob viery divochov, ich náboženské rituály, a to, či sú schopní prijať vieru v Boha, a na treťom mieste spôsob ich každodenného života. Odpovede na tieto otázky nám prinášajú spoločne Jacques le Moyne a Theodore de Bry. Zároveň je možné, prostredníctvom tohto diela skúmať, podľa čoho si vytvárali a formovali svoj pohľad na zámorské kultúry obyvatelia strednej Európy v ranom novoveku.

Blood for the Goddess. Self-mutilation Rituals at Vajreshwari Mandir, Kangra

Several 17th century sources (European travel literature and Mughal historiography) record the practice of self-mutilation, and possibly ritual suicide, at the Hindu temple of Vajreśvarī (Kāngṛā, HP), an important place of pilgrimage related to the Śakti cult. Blood-spilling, symbolizing fertility, played a central role in these sacrifices, which were discontinued in the 18th century as they entered in conflict with the non-violent view of Hinduism supported by urban elites.

Le Voyageur aux mille tours: les ruses de l'ecriture du monde a la Renaissance

This is an elegant book, in four parts and fourteen chapters, on sixteenth-century European travel literature. The structuring Odyssean theme is a capacious one, and it is primarily the concept of metis — ruse — that Frédéric Tinguely retains, although this theme is not central to all the essays. (Other Odyssean themes, such as personal identity, hospitality, nekyia, and nostos, are mostly set aside.) The first part, ‘Infléchir les modèles’, offers several careful analyses of how travel writing reworks previously existing material: especially absorbing is the discussion in Chapter 4 of Calvinist rewriting in Jean Cheneau's Voyage. The second part, ‘Tours oculaires’, addresses eye-witnessing (‘autopsy’). It heterogeneously combines appealing discussions of elephants, tapirs, the Aegean islands, and Montaigne's reactions to the Roman church. Tinguely's diagnosis of Montaigne's subtle reservations about Catholic pomp — usefully juxtaposed with his remarks about the Cannibals (though briefly, in a note) — is thought-provoking. The third part is devoted entirely to Jean de Léry: Tinguely's analysis in Chapter 10 of an encounter with a large Brazilian lizard, by way of Montaigne's cat, is particularly entertaining. A cognitivist might see this as useful material for a history of ‘mind reading’. The final part, ‘Devenir autre’, is arguably the most unified. The discussion in Chapter 12 of Montaigne's ‘anthropological circle’ (that is, of the ways Montaigne's critical faculties are transformed by his changing attitudes towards the cultures, especially German-speaking, that he encounters in his travels), carefully balances another discussion of Jesuit accommodatio in Japan and Canada (Chapter 14). These chapters frame a valuable addition to the discussion of protean identity shifts — notably sexual — in Montaigne. In the best tradition of Genevan criticism, the book is admirably non-parochial. Tinguely moves between classical, and Spanish-, French-, Italian-, German-, and English-language sources; his analysis navigates craftily between Reformist and Catholic theologies. I have one hesitation, since the word ‘cognitif’ comes up frequently, and since Tinguely does not hesitate to adduce, discreetly and effectively, modern analogies, generally in footnotes: a more rigorous discussion of what might fall under the term ‘cognitif’ might help, and recent cognitive work might open up these already excellent analyses to new perspectives. For example, the discussion of how we describe unfamiliar animals, contextualized carefully in the ancient historiographical tradition (in a broad Herodotean sense), might also be recast in terms of the repertory of strategies — perhaps transhistorical — that humans use to describe and cope with unfamiliar phenomena. It is hardly surprising that we might describe new creatures as composites of known ones, or improperly by familiar names whose sense is extended. (Voltaire's much later ‘moutons’, llamas encountered by Candide and Cacambo in Eldorado, come to mind.) These qualifications are not criticisms, but rather they indicate the book's capacity to engage; it is full of subtle observations and elegant close readings. I can only applaud Tinguely's closing defence of a careful, historically contextualized, patient, ‘slow reading’, of clear political relevance today. Indeed, his book is an erudite and sophisticated example of such reading.

Race and racism in modern East Asia: Western and Eastern constructions

List of Illustrations and Tables Conventions Preface 1. Modern East Asia and the Rise of Racial Thought: Possible Links, Unique Features, and Unsettled Issues Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel PART I: WESTERN RACE THEORIES, RACIAL IMAGES AND RACISM 2. Early Modern European Divisions of Mankind and East Asians, 1500-1750 50 Walter Demel and Rotem Kowner 3. How the Mongoloid Came into Being: Late Eighteenth-Century Constructions of East Asians in Europe Walter Demel 4. Between Contempt and Fear: Western Racial Constructions of East Asians since 1800 Rotem Kowner 5. Very Great Gulf: Late Victorian British Diplomacy and Race in East Asia T.G. Otte 6. Pan-Mongolians at Twilight: East Asia and Race in Russian Modernism, 1890-1921 Susanna Soojung Lim 7. National Identity and Race in Post-Revolutionary Russia: Pil'niak's Travelogues from Japan and China Alexander Bukh 8. Class, Race, Floating Signifier: American Media Imagine the Chinese, 1870-1900 Lenore Metrick-Chen 9. Racism for Beginners: Constructions of Chinese in Twentieth Century Belgian Comics Idesbald Goddeeris 10. Race, Imperialism, and Reconstructing Selves: Late Nineteenth Century Korea in European Travel Literature Huajeong Seok 11. Race, Culture and the Reaction to the Victory of 1905 in the English-Speaking World Philip Towle PART II: EAST ASIAN RACE THEORIES, RACIAL POLICIES AND RACISM 12. A Certain Whiteness of Being: Chinese Perceptions of Self by the Beginning of European Contact Don J. Wyatt 13. Racial Discourse and Utopian Visions in Nineteenth Century China Sufen Sophia Lai 14. The Discourse of Race in Twentieth-Century China Frank Dikotter 15. Racist South Korea? Diverse but not Tolerant of Diversity Gi-Wook Shin 16. Skin Color Melancholy in Modern Japan: Male Elites' Racial Experiences Abroad, 1880s-1950s Ayu Majima 17. Anatomically Speaking: The Kubo Incident and the Paradox of Race in Colonial Korea Hoi-eun Kim 18. Who Classified Whom, and for What Purpose? The Japanese in Northeast China in the Age of Empire Mariko Asano Tamanoi 19. Race and International Law in Japan's New Order in East Asia, 1938-1945 Urs Matthias Zachmann 20. East Asia's Melting-Pot: Reevaluating Race Relations in Japan's Colonial Empire 583 Yukiko Koshiro 21. Categorical Confusion: President Obama as a Case Study of Racialized Practices in Contemporary Japan Christine R. Yano Contributors Bibliography Index

<i>In a world without faith and dominated by ambition</i>: Representations of Brazil and the Portuguese in the First Half of the Eighteen Century European Travel Literature

As part of a reflection on Atlantic history, I intend to reread the travel literature written by Europeans who stayed briefly at the Brazilian shore, so as to learn about the Portuguese empire -and particularly Brazil- from the inside and understand how the Portuguese and Luso-Brazilians of the colony were perceived. Travelers registered their impressions based on their own principles, and in some cases exaggerated the cultural differences they observed. This rereading makes it possible to evaluate the differences between a Europe constituted by nations, kingdoms and empires, and Mediterranean Europe. The travel literature, which did not have Brazil as final destination, could have disproportionate and unsuspected repercussions. The accounts showed Portugal and its colonies as similar to Spain and very different from the rest of Europe, at a period of affirmation of the national States and aggressive imperial external policies aimed at the South Atlantic.

The role of human interference on the channel shifting of the Karkheh River in the Lower Khuzestan plain (Mesopotamia, SW Iran)

This study is concerned with the Late Holocene floodplain history of the Karkheh River in Lower Khuzestan, and in particular with the role of human action upon its channel shifts. The research was conducted in a multidisciplinary way, in which resources and approaches from different research fields were combined: (1) geomorphological mapping based on the interpretation of Landsat and CORONA satellite imagery, (2) analyses of geological sequences, including the identification of sedimentary facies and radiocarbon dating of organic material, (3) an archaeological field survey of ancient settlements, and (4) consultation of historical documents, mainly Arabic texts from the 9th–14th century and European travel literature from the 16th-early 20th century. Three main channel belts of the Karkheh were identified (labelled Kh1, Kh2 and Kh3), corresponding to successive stages in the evolution of the floodplain. Two river shifts are documented in the datasets, both taking place within the last 2000 years. The first avulsion regards a shift from channel belt Kh1, once a tributary of the Karun, to the straight river bed of Kh2, taking place at least after 1240–1310 cal BP/710–640 AD. The second avulsion, from Kh2 to Kh3, is clearly documented in historical sources and happened in a single night event in the year 1837/113 cal BP. Reactivation of the Kh2 river bed and its irrigation canals can be attributed to the recent construction of an artificial canal bypassing the second avulsion point. Both river shifts were strongly influenced by human interference, whereby an artificial irrigation canal took over the entire river flow from the main channel belt. Most likely, a combination of human-induced factors, such as weakening of the river levees, high sedimentation rates and disadvantageous channel gradients, led to a situation prone to avulsion.

A Sick Sultana in the Ottoman Imperial Palace: Male Doctors, Female Healers and Female Patients in the Early Modern Period

Abstract Being a human endeavor, medical ethics and clinical practices are affected by a set of social and cultural norms in conjunction with factors pertaining to the patients’ social and financial status. In this paper, I consider how gender and money shaped medical realities in the early modern Ottoman Empire. People of means certainly had more medical options available to them, although that did not necessarily lead to better results. Gender too was naturally an important factor, molding medical options and the relationship between patient and healer. The specific case of the imperial harem will reveal how high socio-economic status has actually curbed women’s medical options, as their access to male doctors was limited. Based on Ottoman archival and legal sources and European travel literature, the paper examines how and why they were limited, and how they went about circumventing such restrictions. The picture that emerges reveals that being a member of the Ottoman elite had its price.

Colonial Tropes and Postcolonial Tricks: Rewriting the Tropics in the "Novela de la selva"

The vision of the South American rainforest as a wilderness of rank decay, poisonous insects, and bloodthirsty ‘savages’ in the Spanish American novela de la selva has often been interpreted as a belated imitation of European travel literature. This book offers a new reading of the genre by arguing that, far from being derivative, the novela de la selva re-imagined the tropics from a Latin American perspective, redefining tropical landscape aesthetics and ethnography through parodic rewritings of European perceptions of Amazonia in fictional and factual travel writing. With particular reference to the four emblematic novels of the genre – W. H. Hudson’s Green Mansions [1904], Jose Eustasio Rivera’s La voragine [1924], Romulo Gallegos’s Canaima [1935], and Alejo Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos [1953] – the book explores how writers throughout post-independence Latin America turned to the jungle as a locus for the contestation of both national and literary identity, harnessing the superabundant tropical vegetation and native myths and customs to forge a descriptive vocabulary which emphatically departed from the reductive categories of European travel writing. Despite being one of the most significant examples of postcolonial literature to emerge from Latin America in the twentieth century, the novela de la selva has, to date, received little critical attention: this book returns a seminal genre of Latin American literature to the centre of contemporary debates about postcolonial identity, travel writing, and imperial landscape aesthetics.

Mining a Mother Lode: Early European Travel Literature and the History of Precious Metalworking in Highland Ethiopia

Our primary concern in this essay is with reconstructing the history of material culture. As anyone who has ever looked into the material culture of Ethiopia quickly discovers, the travel accounts of early European visitors can be a rich and varied source for illuminating any number of such traditions, including those of metal-, leather-, basket-, and woodworking, as well as pottery, weaving, and painting. Dating from the first part of the sixteenth century, the descriptions of journeys and residences in Ethiopia became more prevalent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when they also begin to include illustrations of more than the landscape. As sources for the reconstruction of a particular material tradition, these accounts can offer valuable insights into the nature of the objects and the people who produced and used them. Conversely, they can be frustrating to work with, since the pertinent data they contain most often come in the form of a sentence here or there. Rarely are there entire sections dedicated to descriptions of particular traditions or processes, unless one happened to be of special interest to the writer.Among those scholars who have used travel accounts to great effect is Richard Pankhurst. For many decades, as even a cursory examination of his numerous publications illustrates, he has been mining this mother lode for the scattered sentences and tantalizing suggestions they offer. His most comprehensive writing on this subject is an often-cited 1964 article, “Old Time Handicrafts of Ethiopia.” Divided into sections, each dealing with a different tradition, Pankhurst cited various descriptive accounts that mentioned specific traditions. The basic approach taken in this and other publications that have followed is one perhaps best described, in keeping with the mining metaphor, as one of “prospecting” or in some cases mining “surface deposits.”

Pavie in the Borderlands: The Journey of Theodore Pavie to Louisiana and Texas, 1829-1830, including Portions of His "Souvenirs Atlantiques"

Pavie in the Borderlands: The Journey of Theodore Pavie to Louisiana and Texas, 1829-1830, Including Portions of His Souvenirs Atlantiques. By Betje Black Klier. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000. Pp. xviii, 280. Appendix, maps, illustrations. Cloth, $49.95; paper, $24.95.) Voyage to North America, 1844-45: Prince Carl of Solms's Texas Diary of People, Places and Events. Translated and edited by Wolfram M. Von-- Maszewski. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2000. Pp. ix, 244. Illustrations, maps, appendix. $32.50.) Louisiana State University Press and the University of North Texas Press have recently published two interesting translations and analyses of European perspectives on American borderlands in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s. In Pavie in the Borderlands, Betje Black Klier provides a fascinating look at one of Louisiana's most enterprising families of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Pavies, French immigrants who maintained close ties with their family back in France, built a family empire around Nachitoches, Louisiana, while intermarrying with the local Spanish, French, and American families. As a result, the family eventually lost much of its French culture. The primary purpose of Klier's narrative, however, is to set the stage for and examine the visit of the Pavies' young French kinsman, Theodore Pavie, during the winter of 1829-30. Pavie, an eighteen-year-old aspiring writer in the tradition of the great Romantic authors of the age, came to the United States not only to visit family, but also-and more importantly for this budding artist-to experience nature in its purest form, as had other Romantic writers before him, particularly his hero, Chateaubriand. After providing the reader with a thoughtful narrative of Theodore Pavie's life up to this important voyage and trip to the Louisiana-Texas borderlands, Klier includes a chapter of translations of Pavie's letters home with commentary on the significance of the letters. This chapter is perhaps the most important one in the book. While the young Pavie postured in these letters to the family about his adventures and his importance within his American family circle, these letters are far more informative regarding life on the American borderlands in the first half of the nineteenth century than his later, more carefully prepared memoirs of his American adventures, Souvenirs Atlantiques: Voyage aux Etats-Unis et au Canada (1832). In his letters, Pavie is more honest about the terror that gripped inhabitants and visitors alike regarding the diseases of Louisiana. His letters also reveal a sadly insecure young man, alone in a strange, wild place. The young Frenchman-painfully homesick for his country, family, and friends-was out of place in a world of transplanted Europeans, frontiersmen, Indians, and African slaves. His letters tell us much about how Europeans perceived the dangerous place called America and the hodgepodge of people who inhabited it. In his more carefully-prepared memoirs, apparently based only partly on his personal experiences, Pavie consciously imitates the style of European Romantic writers. In the tradition of eighteenth- and nineteenth-- century European travel literature, Pavie describes in florid detail the purity of the American wilderness. By providing the first English translation of excerpts from Souvenirs Atlantiques, Klier has done a considerable service to students of nineteenth-century French and European literature. However, this section of the book is probably the least useful to students of the American borderlands. Pavie's sensationalized, though superficial, look at African slavery and his description of the displacement of American Indians and the erosion of their culture appear designed more to demonstrate the author's literary style than to educate his readers. …

Reading Indian music: The interpretation of seventeenth‐century European travel‐writing in the (re)construction of Indian music history

Reconstructing the history of an art as elusive as Indian classical1 music, improvised and largely unnotated, and complete only in the moment of performance, has proven to be a somewhat problematic undertaking. Recently, however, there has been a growing interest in trying to place Indian music in its historical context as a means of understanding better some of its present manifestations (Wade I998:lvi). It has increasingly been recognized that European travel literature, with its easy accessibility and its copious documentation of cultural detail, constitutes a valuable source of musical information. However, travel‐writing is also a notoriously complex and contradictory genre, generally denying a straightforward reading.2 This has rarely been taken into consideration by musicologists using these sources. When interpreted critically, however, this genre does offer a unique perspective on music, which is able to make a significant contribution to the reconstruction of Indian music history. This paper discusses how the travel literature published during the seventeenth century can be used as a source for the study of music under the Mughal Emperors Jahangir (r. 1605–27), Shah Jahan (r. 1628–58) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707).

French Odysseys: Greece in French Travel Literature from the Renaissance to the Romantic Era

In Odysseys, Olga Augustinos offers a comprehensive treatment of French travel literature about - from the mid-16th-century arrival of the first French travellers to the outbreak of the Greek Revolution in 1821. The result not only provides a composite portrait of over two and a half centuries but also offers a revealing look at the evolving values and perceptual framework of the travellers themselves. Augustinos begins by exploring the dramatic differences between French travel writing of the early modern era and previous accounts of medieval religious pilgrimages. In place of otherworldly invocations of the grace of divine providence came emphasis on visual perception and precise observation as a means of understanding the physical universe. After 1750, in keeping with developments in European literature, travelogues became infused with sentimental musings, picturesque portrayals of natural sites and monuments, and lyrical effusions that injected a personal, subjective note into what had previously been factual narratives. Yet European travel literature on Greece, Augustinos explains, also has a unique dimension. The legacy of the classical past - real or imagined - made the country seem closer to the West, while its state of subjugation placed it in the penumbra between East and West. Confronted with the discrepancy between classical ideal and contemporary reality, travellers increasingly attempted to impose their preconceptions of what Greece ought to be, a process that culminated in the emergence of philhellenism in the late-18th century.

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (review)

Book Reviews 215 Dejene, Peasants, Agrarian Socialism and Rural Development in Ethiopia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987). For the Norwegian/IDR project, see Svein Ege, ed., Ethiopia: Problems ofSustainable Development :A ConferenceReport (Dragvoll, Norway: University of Trondheim, College of Arts and Science, Ethiopia Research Programme, 1990). 2.Elsewhere, he complains about rural folks' tendency to answer all queries on local conditions by choosing the "moderate" option on the scheduled questionnaires (pp. 35-36). 3.Though Mesfin seems to be arguing from a "moral economy" perspective , he has elsewhere denied the validity of this concept for Ethiopia. See Mesfin Wolde-Mariam, Rural Vulnerability to Famine in Ethiopia: 1958-1977 (Addis Ababa, 1984), 17. 4.Against one British writer who also headed an NGO, Mesfin makes a direct, but unsubstantiated, charge of plagiarism (p. 14, n. 5). Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton Edward Rice New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1990. 522 pp. + xxi. In developing source critiques, biographies are often overlooked. This is particularly true regarding the heavily used European travel literature about Ethiopia. James Bruce, Cornwallis Harris, and Richard Burton, to select a few British examples, all attained fame by writing about their adventures, thereby captivating the imaginations of casual readers as well as serious scholars. Yet Africanists have rarely employed these biographies . Rather, most critiques, embedded in discursive footnotes or other obscure passages, are merely contemporary judgments about prevailing European character traits, such as 19th-century attitudes toward sexuality, race, and religion. What the better biographies offer is insight into the personalities of the travelers by comparing their oftentimes iconoclastic views with predominant European mores. Edward Rice provides such a service for Richard Burton—perhaps the most controversial, yet colorful, 19th-century explorer. In his book Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, Rice provides well researched evidence concerning Burton's chameleon-like persona—his ability to be oriental or occidental. Probing into Burton's formative years, Rice 226 Book Reviews shows how his peripatetic father dragged the family around Europe, providing opportunities for young Burton to learn other languages and, after achieving fluency, to assume different European cultural identities . His atypical education—he dropped out of Oxford—is most remarkable , for without mentorship Burton achieved acclaim as the preeminent Orientalist, being a linguist, eastern philologist and theologian, and cultural anthropologist. His conversions (the sincerity of them is much in debate) and his deep understanding of Islam with all the subtle distinctions between its sectarian theologies, allowed Burton to pass as a Sufi dervish. Rice makes it abundantly clear that Burton's travels to Mecca and Harar, as the first white man to enter these mysterious bastions of Islam, were not the reckless adventures of a person possessing a Byronic death wish—a characteristic he attributed to John Hanning Speke. Rather, Burton was fastidious in preparing for his expeditions, always attempting to anticipate each trial or predicament. Foreseeing an instance where his Sufi identity would be questioned, Burton developed a family genealogy as a "Pathan, born in India of Afghan parents" (p. 186). If doubts persisted about his command of Arabic, his knowledge of the Koran, and his eating, dressing, and ablution habits were intended to resolved any reservations. "Still very much the haji, in Arab dress, and wearing the green turban that was the privilege of those who had made the hajj" (p. 221), Burton channeled his energy, after returning from his celebrated trip to Mecca, by organizing an expedition to assess the Somali coast and penetrate into the forbidden city of Harar in the interior. Based largely on Burton's First Footsteps in East Africa; Or, an Exploration ofHarar, chapters 18 and 19 of Rice's book outline the discoveries and hardships that Burton encountered. Yet, and as a general criticism of biographies about literary fellows, Rice's third-person narrative loses the immediacy of the firsthand account. Gone is the exuberant, sometimes malicious, other times pedantic style of Burton that transports the reader into an exotic world far removed from his or her own.1 What Rice does provide is background into personality conflicts between Burton and many of his contemporaries—most notably Speke— as a microcosm of a larger societal conflict. Burton represented the aberrant individual struggling...

Pseudonymous Travel Accounts as Texts: A Case from Nineteenth Century Vienna

In the pseudonymous travel account discussed in this article, a native poses as a traveler to write a description of native life. This form is distinctive because it gains its descriptive from the authenticity attributed to travelers' accounts by the intended readership. The work in question is Wien wie es ist, written by Gross-Hoffinger, a Viennese geographer and publicist, but published under the name of Hans Normann, purportedly a German, in Leipzig in 1833. The work is of interest ethnohistorically because of its comments on the texture of everyday life in Vienna during the early industrialization. This work permits me to discuss how pseudonymous travel accounts sometimes mimic the same rhetorical devices as realist ethnographic texts, thereby establishing the same sort of textual authority, even as it is applied to different ends. Travel literature has come under greater scrutiny in recent years as ethnographers try to understand how their efforts differ from other kinds of descriptions of social life. The tradition of ethnographic realism developed by Malinowski and others at the turn of the century was in part a rejection of the perceived weaknesses and unreliability of travelers' and administrators' accounts. In the present climate of experimentation in ethnographic writing, a climate Clifford has characterized as one of dispersion in ethnographic authority (1983: 120), it is important to reexamine the models of description that were previously rejected to learn more about the difficult task of cultural description. One conclusion of our efforts at re-examining travel literature is that the genre is multifaceted and actually contains a range of cultural distance between the traveler and the subject. The text I will discuss here represents one of the extremes in this corpus: the pseudonymous travel account in which a native poses as a traveler to write the description of native life. This peculiar stance is most often encountered in European travel literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This form is distinctive because it gains its descriptive from the authenticity attributed to travelers' accounts by its intended readership. Like a mockingbird, the pseudonymous account borrows the song of the real traveler. Thus camouflaged, the message of the writer can then read as the impressions of an outsider who cannily perceives the strengths and weaknesses of a strange land. The intention is not to lend further credibility to travel literature, since the pseudonymous version could not exist unless that were already well established. Instead, the intention is to boost the reputation of a particular society, criticize its foibles, or, as in the present instance, both boost and criticize at the same time.

The Rhetoric of Travel: The French Romantic Myth of Naples

The corpus of travel literature about any given place or people, if systematically examined from a rhetorical point of view, yields up a series of (topol). Only after such topoi are defined might it become possible, in the case of any given example from such a corpus, to discriminate topoi from fact: the rhetorical heritage of received ideas about a place or people which a traveller has brought with him from home, on the one hand, from the record of his actual observations, on the other. Such a search for the commonplaces which recur in a particular corpus of travel literature is illustrated by describing the preliminary results of the author's study of French accounts of Naples from what literary historians call the period, which extends very roughly through the first half of the nineteenth century but has it roots in the pre-revolutionary period of Rousseau. The elements in the myth of Naples which evolved during the troubled romantic period were essentially two, each in tension with the other: power, a creative spirit with the energy of a volcano, ready to be tapped; and bondage, suffering inflicted by a despotic power on a willing slave. Introduction: Traditions of a Genre Travel literature as a genre has a very long history in Europe, going back at least to that time in the later Middle Ages when the growth of trade with the Middle and Far East stimulated interest in exotic regions. The Crusades, particularly, represented a flow of not only money and goods, but also words. The genre is indelibly marked by its origin: typically, late medieval European travel literature purports explicitly to give an account of the details and patterns of life in the Holy Land or Asia, but implicitly takes its focus from the effort to persuade the reader to adopt a particular attitude toward the place described. That is, travel literature is a primarily rhetorical genre which historically masks itself as primarily mimetic. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) attests to the great age the genre had already attained in his day by doing what one can do only to a well-established literary form, one whose conventions are already known to the reading public selected: he parodies travel narrative. The way in which he does so, moreover, casts into relief the rhetorical impetus behind this putatively mimetic genre, so that a brief look at his parody may serve well as a conceptual introduction to an examination of the much later body of travel narrative which is the principal object of the present study. In the second tale in his Decameron,' Boccaccio uses one of his favorite techniques to make his readers both laugh and ponder: He inverts a well-known plot structure. The protagonist of the tale is not a Christian journeying to the Holy Land, but rather a Jew. Abraham, a Parisian merchant, journeys southward, not to the Holy Land of Palestine, his own place of cultural origin, but instead to the sacred city of Rome. There he is appalled to see the Pope and the Curia practice daily sins repugnant to believer and pagan alike, much as medieval Christian travel narNOAKES This content downloaded from 207.46.13.124 on Sun, 11 Sep 2016 05:10:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms