Romantic Travel Research Articles

El viaje romántico en clave de género: Carolina Coronado y su paseo europeo desde el Tajo al Rin

This work focuses on one of the very few examples of women's travel literature during Spanish Romanticism: the series of seven articles published by Carolina Coronado in the newspaper La Ilustración between 1851 and 1852 under the title «Un paseo desde el Tajo al Rhin. Descansando en el Palacio de Cristal». In the mid-19th century, Spanish women, unlike their European counterparts, still showed little inclination to travel and, moreover, their marginal socio-literary position was not an incentive to leave a written record of their few trans-Pyrenean excursions. Carolina Coronado, however, travelled around Europe for several months and dared to recount her experience in a literary genre unusual for Spanish women through the pages of one of the most modern illustrated newspapers of the time, which constitutes a female intellectual and authorial assertion that is absolutely unusual in our cultural context of the mid-1800s. This article reviews the discoursive strategies, devices and negotiations through which Carolina Coronado's exercise of authority was able to find its place in the public sphere —the nineteenth-century Spanish press— to become a singular example of female romantic travel literature.

Rasa, płeć i status społeczny: intersekcjonalna analiza wizerunków kobiet pozaeuropejskich w polskim podróżopisarstwie romantycznym

The article analyses the image of non-European women in Polish Romantic travel writing, adopting an intersectional lens to focus on differences in the women’s descriptions due to the race, gender, and social status.

Contributors’ Notes

Contributors’ Notes

Between exploration and tourism: Carl Irminger’s Iceland travel diary 1826

Abstract In the spring of 1826, the young Danish naval officer Carl Irminger and two of his friends sailed with a cargo ship from Copenhagen to Iceland to stay there during the summer. This article is based on Irminger’s unpublished travel diary. Irminger and his friends blended in with the local elite, which provided them with equipment and contacts to travel. Their journeys out from Reykjavik were adventurous and depended on local guides and the hospitality of residents along the way. The tales of hardships during the travels, combined with contacts established during the trip, became important credentials in Irminger’s future career. He was hired as an adjutant to the Danish prince, and the narrative of his summer in Iceland ignited a royal expedition there in 1834, of which Irminger was to be the trip leader. Irminger’s diary reflects a broader shift from Enlightenment exploration reporting into Romantic travel writing, with more emotional and aesthetic emphasis. His journey was a forerunner of the nature tourism that eventually was to sprout in Iceland.

Apeniny we wspomnieniach Anieli Walewskiej

Kilka chwil we Włoszech w latach 1847 i 1848 [A few Moments in Italy in 1847 and 1848], a volume of memoirs published in 1850 and written by Aniela Walewska — a forgotten author of the Romantic era — is a historically, culturally and socially interesting travel account which, in addition to notes devoted to the political situation at the time, also features descriptions of cultural and natural landscapes which Walewska had an opportunity to admire during her Italian voyage. Particularly worthy of note are her reflections concerning mountain landscapes reflecting the author’s romantic sensibility as well as her emotional and aesthetic attitude to new places. Spending a few weeks in the Tuscan resort of Bagni di Lucca, Aniela Walewska had an opportunity to admire the Apennines, which generated admiration and lofty feelings in her and prompted her to engage in existential, philosophical and religious reflection. Using a variety of means of literary expression, the writer sought to convey the varied aspects of the mountains: solemn beauty, picturesque charm, severe and wild appearance. Yet despite her lively interest in the Apennine landscapes, the Polish traveller was preoccupied primarily with the political situation in her distant homeland, which determined her perception of and feeling for the mountains so much that her observations often departed from purely aesthetic evaluation in favour of patriotic associations. However, the descriptions in her memoirs are vivid, full of admiration and rapture, which makes them worthy of being brought back from obscurity and analysed thoroughly. As evidence of individual and feminine way of experiencing the world of nature, they certainly make a valuable contribution to the Romantic travel literature and expand our knowledge of the history of mountain voyages of Polish women in that period.

Attributes that form romantic travel experience: a study of Chinese Generation Y tourists

ABSTRACT This paper examines attributes that form Chinese Generation Y tourists’ romantic travel experience from five perspectives, including travel companions, physical attributes, destinations’ services, social and cultural interactions and meanings. Based on 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews, this study finds that travel companions and destinations’ physical attributes are the most important antecedents of romantic travel experience. Moreover, Chinese Generation Y tourists tend to evaluate their romantic travel experience based on an overall travel experience instead of only focusing on one romantic attribute. As sex is not identified as an important attribute that form Chinese Generation Y tourists’ romantic experience, this study challenges the existing studies which highlight the importance of sexual behaviours and romantic encounters among tourists for romantic travel experience. Finally, based on these findings, a model of Chinese Generation Y tourists’ romantic travel experience is suggested.

Nutrition and gastronomy in the Basque Country

For centuries the traditional ingredients of food patterns in Basque Country were millet, chestnuts, cabbage, beans, lentils, fish, pork and beef especially, as well as a variety of fruits such as apples, pears and grapes. Later, the potato replaced chestnuts, corn replaced millet and beans replaced broad beans. In addition, tomatoes and peppers added to the vegetable repertoire. Cocoa also found great acceptance from the eighteenth century and the consumption of cider, especially among seamen, played a very important role in the prevention of scurvy. During the nineteenth century, the rise of industrialization led to important social changes and in food habits. The great romantic travelers and their stories contributed to the diffusion of uses and customs, among others, those related to culinary preparations and eating habits. Later, the growing interest in thermal baths also attracted visitors from France, Germany, Italy or Great Britain to the Basque Country, sometimes accompanied by their chefs and servants, who brought with them their own culinary practices to the Basque kitchens and restaurants. From 1977 and inspired by the Nouvelle cuisine, the new Basque cuisine emerged led by great chefs such as Juan Marí Arzak and Pedro Subijana, who soon brought together a large group that has led the current Basque cuisine to internationally recognized excellence. The new tendencies coexist with the cult to traditions and to specific forms of conviviality around the food: txokos and gastronomic societies; pintxos, pintxopote and cider houses.

The Alhambra: Transformation and Change through Architectural Ceramics

In the following paper, we look at the Alhambra from a perspective of architectural ceramics, an essential element in the understanding of the monument. From the Nasrid era onward, glazed ceramic tile mosaics were used to adorn the walls, a style that extended into the Christian conquest, when the palace complex was used as a royal residence. Since then, restoration work has continued to be carried out on the alicatados that cover the Alhambra’s walls, especially during an intense period in the 19th century, when it was the subject of much interest from Romantic travellers to Granada. A detailed, documented analysis of this work shows the complexity of the palace and fortress complex, helping us to better understand a part of its history. In the following pages, we specifically focus on one room in the Alhambra, the so-called Cuarto Dorado (Golden Room), outlining the preliminary findings of a research project that we are undertaking in association with the University of Granada and the Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife (Council of the Alhambra and the Generalife).

Una mirada romántica de la Alhambra

Tão importante quanto o patrimônio construído que compõe a Alhambra e o Generalife é a imagem projetada, ao longo dos séculos, para o resto do mundo a respeito desse complexo arquitetônico. Nela, muito tiveram a observar os viajantes românticos que buscaram um oriente próximo das terras espanholas. Independente de opiniões, mais ou menos corretas, que se expressaram sobre “o espanhol”, o que se torna indiscutível é que, graças a eles, a Alhambra tornou-se conhecida e, por extensão, a cidade de Granada, como um dos destinos universalmente reconhecidos. O modo como atualmente se faz uso dessa imagem projetada e fortemente enraizada no imaginário coletivo é um trabalho que deve partir de uma profunda reflexão multidisciplinar. No entanto, deve-se levar em consideração que do resultado da mesma devem-se obter os conhecimentos e meios para traduzir os diversos olhares a respeito das múltiplas faces do complexo arquitetônico nazarí, envolvendo desde os cidadãos de Granada aos organismos e instituições responsáveis por sua gestão.

Le récit de voyage romantique : L’Angleterre, l’Allemagne et la Scandinavie comparées au cas unique de la France

This article offers an overview of the production of ‘romantic travel narratives’ from a European perspective and confronts those that emanate from French, English, German and Scandinavian literature. This comparison aims to establish the common characteristics of this sub-genre, its recurrent features and the cultural histories of each of the countries explored. Focusing on Charles Dickens, Friedrich Schlegel and Hans Christian Andersen, the analysis highlights the differences in their approaches, which are partly conditioned by the socio-historical context of their respective countries.

Gender Stereotypes in Some Romantic Travelogues (and How to Use Them)

This article looks at Romantic travel literature from a gendered perspective. After general considerations on the masculine dimension of travel writing, I focus on three narratives presented as having been written by a woman, more or less in collaboration with her husband. My purpose here is not to look for a specifically masculine or feminine type of travel writing, but to analyse how the openly gendered dimension of the text impacts its reception, to the extent that it may be said to partake of a strategy aiming at conveying a sometimes radical discourse.

En busca de Ramuntcho: cineastas extranjeros en el País Vasco-francés

Since the earliest days of the cinema, the French Basque Country has been a place of pilgrimage for great filmmakers from different nations. Since the XIX century Romantic travellers and intellectuals had portrayed it as an exotic, timeless and differentiated topos. Following in their wake the cinema, with its immense capacity for symbolic representation, contributed to popularizing a mythical image of Basqueness, an image that was finally even adopted by the inhabitants of the place themselves. Through an historical analysis of three documentaries made by three great directors and produced in three European countries in the first half of the XX century, this article sets out to describe the filmic origin of that often hegemonic Basque imaginary based on a rural arcadia, understand how it was produced and highlight the different readings made of it; thus reaffirming the complex polysemy of that image of Basqueness.

‘Appelsinpiken’ and experiential tourism. Andalusia, ‘geography with a thrill’

The purpose of this article is to analyse the context in which ‘Appelsinpiken’ (‘The Orange Girl’, Eva Dahr, 2008) was filmed, and also the image of tourism in Seville that the films suggests as a reduction of the image of Andalusia and Spain in the Nordic collective conscience. In keeping with the canons of Romanticism and the premises of ‘experiential tourism’, Seville’s colourful appearance in the film is limited to promoting the city as a tourism destination that is utterly stuck in the past : an audiovisual appeal to the tourist ego via the emotional vision of the phenomenon of a journey.For this analysis, a qualitative study is conducted of both Andalusia’s importance as a destination for the Norwegian tourism market and the contrast between the two images of Seville, so far apart in time, described by two Nordic writers-tourists, (Andersen and Gaarder), along with the reactions to the shooting and premiere of ‘Appelsinpiken’. These methods will help Sevillians come face to face with their own stereotypes and demonstrate the need to do away with banal cliches and straitjacketing. Seville’s enduring mythical image for tourism, a legacy of 19th century romantic travellers and of films coproduced in the nineteen-fifties and sixties, is brought up to the present day and enhanced with the experiential perspective embodied in this barely known film, which, despite having little resonance in Spain, nonetheless was filmed with the support of the Seville Film Office, the regional government’s TV and radio broadcasting service (Canal Sur) and Jaleo Films. Seville, shown with a fractured identity, a mix of iconic images and realities, misses the opportunity to present itself on the big screen as it really is.

Sublime perversions: Capturing the uncanny affects of queer temporalities in Mississippian ruins

During the 19th century, sublime depictions of North American mounds captivated Euro-American colonists and Romantic travelers. Settlers frequently embedded farms and homesteads into the material fabric of these Indigenous ruins across the American Bottom region and surrounding uplands, uncovering traces of antiquity in the process. Focusing on the Emerald mound site and broader mound discourses, I examine how material intimacies underlying this 19th-century phenomenon periodically corrupted Romantic sensibilities. Specifically, I highlight aspects of archival and spatial data that capture fleeting moments when mound intercourse generated uncanny affects and queer temporalities. I argue that in moments when uncanny affects haunted colonial homes, Indigenous histories queered the tense of settler colonialism.

Spanish archetypes in transnational cinema: a comparative study of iconography

Bullfighting is one of the most typical icons that brings to mind Spanish culture. It served as a narrative and iconographic motif for nineteenth-century Romantic travelers and remained central to the representation of what was considered the essence of Spain for writers and artists of the twentieth century; it continues to be a significant, albeit controversial, marker of Spanish identity in the present. As a modern phenomenon, bullfighting has had a close relationship with cinema. This article aims to analyze, from a cinematic perspective, the use of symbols, iconographies and narrative themes that have served to construct a Spanish national imaginary. Beginning with the recordings of bullfights made by the Lumière company, it goes on to analyze different versions of Blood and Sand and concludes with the movie Blancanieves, moving through a wide range of phases in the historical trajectory of the filmic representation of bullfighting. The article takes a transnational perspective, paying particular attention to films and coproductions made outside of Spain and showing the tension between transnational models – in which the notion of Spanishness is endowed with exoticism and “otherness” – and specifically Spanish formulations. The article addresses cinema's contribution to the past construction of the iconic paradigm of Spain and to its continuing validity today.

Romantic Readers and Transatlantic Travel: Expeditions and Tours in North America 1760-1840

Romantic Readers and Transatlantic Travel: Expeditions and Tours in North America 1760-1840

Romantic Readers and Transatlantic Travel: Expeditions and Tours in North America, 1760-1840

Romantic Readers and Transatlantic Travel: Expeditions and Tours in North America, 1760-1840

Romantic Readers and Transatlantic Travel: Expeditions and Tours in North America, 1760-1840

Romantic Readers and Transatlantic Travel: Expeditions and Tours in North America, 1760-1840

Romantic Readers and Transatlantic Travel: Expeditions and Tours in North America, 1760-1840

Romantic Readers and Transatlantic Travel: Expeditions and Tours in North America, 1760-1840

French Romantic Travel Writing: Chateaubriand to Nerval

French Romantic Travel Writing: Chateaubriand to Nerval