Travel Letters Research Articles

De reisbrieven van R.C. Bakhuizen van den Brink, geschreven gedurende zijn ‘ballingschap’, 1844-1851

Abstract R.C. Bakhuizen van den Brink’s travel letters, written during his ‘exile’, 1844-1851 In the years 1844-1851, during his journey along libraries and archives in Germany and Austria, the young scholar and later writer and archivist Bakhuizen van den Brink (1810-1865) wrote extensive love letters to Julie Simon, who he had left behind in Liège. Expressing the emotions aroused by his exile from the Netherlands and the separation from the young woman whose heart he desired to win, Bakhuizen resorted to themes that are recurrent in other literary genres such as the epic and the Bildungsroman. Understanding the letters as works of art, this article sets out to trace and analyze these intertextual references between the letters and the genres of the epic and the Bildungsroman. References to the latter come to light when comparing the love letters to the letters Bakhuizen van den Brink wrote to his learned Dutch friends. By disclosing this intertextual network and by relating the themes from the epic and Bildungsroman to the repertoire of the young, 19th-century Dutch scholar, this article holds an attempt to deconstruct these 19th-century love letters.

Application of Prototyping Model Method in Designing Web-Based SPPD KPPN Medan II Application

KPPN Medan II is one of the government organization units at the Ministry of Finance. Where leaders and employees who work at KPPN Medan II always carry out official trips between cities and outside the city. With these conditions, making SPPD documents experiencing the intensity of official travel activities carried out by employees of KPPN Medan II can be said frequently. So that in making SPPD in KPPN Medan II is still using the manual method that is recording through Microsoft Word which in the sense is less effective and efficient. In naming employees who get official assignments, officers manually entering employee data that receives official travel letters are prone to being lost because data is manually written. Web-based SPPD application is built by applying this prototyping method which is expected to facilitate SPPD KPPN Medan II management officers in making SPPD that is effective, efficient, accurate, time-saving, and not prone to loss of SPPD data of KPPN Medan II employees who will, are, and has made official trips due to the existence of a special database to accommodate all SPPD files.

Journeying through inner and outer worlds: the significance of travel across the works of Rabindranath Tagore

ABSTRACT Travelling is a common subject and motif throughout the works of Indian poet, philosopher and artist Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941). Tagore travelled across India and the world throughout his life, especially after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. He often wrote of his journeys and their lessons in letters, memoirs, and essays and frequently used travelling and related themes as metaphors or allusions in written and visual works. Travelling between inner and outer realms, home and world, was especially illuminating, offering him inspiration and new perspectives. This discussion traces the theme of travel across Tagore’s career, examining references to travelling in four different genres in Tagore’s oeuvre – early travel letters, a mid-life memoir, his prize-winning poetry and paintings made later in life. These and related works are used to show how the act and idea of travel profoundly influenced Tagore’s life and works, shaping his political, educational and creative philosophies.

Travelling with Darwin and Humboldt. A Transdisciplinary Educational Experience

Aim. This research aims to confirm that transdisciplinary projects can be very adequate to develop content and competencies traditionally assigned to Sciences and Arts in higher education, exploring the possibilities of outdoor education.
 Methods. The subjects of the study were one hundred alumni of two different courses “Natural Sciences for Teachers” and “Literary Training for Teachers” at a Spanish university. An educational experience around the phenomenon of scientific travelers was developed, focusing on Charles Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt and the literary genres of travel journals and letters. The main activity contained three phases, including indoor and outdoor education, in which both subjects tackled the same 6 educational topics from a different perspective. After different individual and group activities around those topics, alumni from both subjects merged at a natural environment where a scientific-literary tour took place. At the end of the academic year, an assessment questionnaire with open and closed questions was filled out by all participants.
 Results and conclusion. After the analysis of all the collected data, we can deduce that the experience was a success. The students appreciated aspects like the setting in which the experience took place, the possibility of interacting with alumni from different courses and the integration of Sciences and Arts. Thus, we have demonstrated that the same activities can be implemented in prototypical subjects of Sciences and Arts and that outdoor education is an ideal resource to achieve a holistic pedagogy engaging the sensory and emotional facets of learning.

Aspek Hukum Pidana Warga Negara Asing Ke Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia Tanpa Melalui Pemeriksaan Pejabat Imigrasi (Studi Putusan No: 1474/Pid.Sus/2016/PN. Mdn)

Immigration is a form of legal action that is marked by the arrival or presence of foreigners in the territory of the Republic of Indonesia and the departure of Indonesian citizens to the territory of other countries by using or not having immigration travel documents. The method of this research is normative juridical, which is using Library Research. Legal arrangements regarding foreign nationals to Indonesia without going through immigration official inspection are outlined in Article 8 and Article 9 of Law No. 6 of 2011 concerning Immigration and also in Article 3, Article 20 and Article 21 of Government Regulation Number 31 of 2013 concerning Regulations for the Implementation of Law Number 6 of 2011 concerning Immigration and Minister of Law and Human Rights Regulation of the Republic of Indonesia Number 8 of 2014 concerning Passports Ordinary And Travel Letters Like Passports. Law enforcement against criminal offenses of Foreign Citizens to Indonesia without going through the examination of immigration officials then the perpetrators may be subject to administrative sanctions and criminal sanctions, the perpetrators who enter the territory of Indonesia without going through immigration officials have violated Article 113 of Law No. 6 of 2011 concerning immigration and sentenced to six months imprisonment

PENERAPAN METODE PROTOTYPING PADA PERANCANGAN APLIKASI SPPD KPPN MEDAN II BERBASIS WEBSITE

KPPN Medan II is one of the government organization units at the Ministry of Finance. Where leaders and employees who work at KPPN Medan II always carry out official trips between cities and outside the city. With these conditions, making SPPD documents experiencing the intensity of official travel activities carried out by employees of KPPN Medan II can be said frequently. So that in making SPPD in KPPN Medan II is still using the manual method that is recording through Microsoft Word which in the sense is less effective and efficient. In naming employees who get official assignments, officers manually entering employee data that receives official travel letters are prone to being lost because data is manually written. The web-based SPPD application is built by applying this prototyping method which is expected to facilitate SPPD KPPN Medan II management officers in making SPPD that is effective, efficient, accurate, time-saving, and not prone to losing SPPD data of KPPN Medan II employees who will has made official trips due to the existence of a special database to accommodate all SPPD files.

SPECIAL FEATURES OF CHRONOTOPE IN A TRAVELOGUE (BY THE EXAMPLE OF “TRAVEL LETTERS FROM ENGLAND, GERMANY AND FRANCE” BY N.I. GRECH

The article considers special features of time and space characteristics of the genre of travelogue. On the example of “Travel letters from England, Germany and France” by N.I. Grech the peculiarity of the space and time is demonstrated, its special nature is connected with the opposition of self identity and the other, which is characteristic for travelogues. Transformation of time and space depends on the author's assessment and the desire to show the country he is visiting and describing to the reader. Three chronotopes can be distinguished in the travelogue (events, history and culture) which is connected with the author's plan and his evaluation of the other. Depending of the country described by the travelling author both time and space can change significantly. England is represented by quickly changing pictures, time spent there is full of events. France - pondering over the past fame, Germany - idyllic memories. Linear movement in time, following strict chronological order of the events happening, following the route and plans is changed to sudden detours, falling into memories that represent the author's response to the environment. Special and unique dialogue with the other, important for travelogue, is reflected in the chronotope.

Fluidity and Timelessness in the Letters of Nikolai Gretsch

SummaryIn 1839, Russian traveller Nikolai Gretsch published Travel Letters from England, Germany and France («Путевые Письма из Англии, Германии и Франции»), a series of letters in three volumes that details selected events from his 1837 voyage through these countries. Gretsch was a shrewd observer of the cultures he experienced, and he sent many of his observations home for publication in the newspaper he edited called The Northern Bee («Северная пчела»). These articles became the basis for the Travel Letters volumes. The letters constitute a valuable resource for historians and literary scholars interested in an outsider’s view of post-Napoleonic Western Europe. Additionally, they offer the unique perspective of a writer from a country that still used the Julian calendar when England, France, and Germany used the Gregorian calendar. This disjunction between calendars was frequently on Gretsch’s mind as he made notes of his travels, and the resulting narrative provides a unique awareness of the passage of time and of the arbitrary nature of time measurement, which we examine through the theoretical framework established by Stephen Kern. Throughout the narrative, Gretsch conflates past and present to produce a sort of historical present that creates a sense of immediacy and liveliness for readers.

“My lot is cast in with my sex and country”: Generic Conventions, Gender Anxieties and American Identity in Emma Hart Willard’s and Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s Travel Letters

The article analyses generic conventions, gender constraints and authorial self-definition in two ante-bellum American travel accounts – Emma Hart Willard’s Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain (1833) and Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (1841). Emma Hart Willard, a pioneer in women’s higher education and Catharine Maria Sedgwick, an author of sentimental novels, were influential figures of the Early Republic, active in the literary public sphere. Narrative personas adopted in their travel letters have been shaped by the authors’ national identity on the one hand and by ideals of republican motherhood, which they propagated, on the other. Both travelogues are preceded with apologies filled with self-deprecating rhetoric, typical for women’s travel writing in the early 19th century and both are intended to instruct the American reader. Other conventional features of American antebellum travel writing include comparisons between British and American government and society with a view of extolling the latter as well as avid interest in social status and public activities of European women. Willard and Sedgwick deal with possible gender anxieties of their upper middle-class female readers by assuring them that following one’s literary or educational vocation in the public sphere does necessarily mean compromising ideals of true womanhood in private life.

Navigating travel with diabetes.

As the number of people who travel continues to increase, so too will the number of travelers with diabetes. This increase will come with new and more frequent requests for medical travel advice. This article equips clinicians with the tools to address patient concerns about travel and to empower patients to be prepared for emergency situations both abroad and at home. This includes encouraging patients to obtain a travel letter, bring enough supplies for the trip, and have a plan to manage time-zone changes.

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...

Zen Communist: Breyten Breytenbach’s view from underground

In an interview after his release from prison, Breyten Breytenbach describes himself, at the time he became involved in underground politics, as a Zen Communist. He returns occasionally to this interaction of Marxist ideas of social revolution and Buddhist ideas of non-attachment, but never attempts to explain the resulting synthesis systematically. Indeed, for Breytenbach, being a Zen Communist is to resist systematic positions, to accept contradiction as a constant source of surprise and invention disruptive of all systematic thought. This paper examines how this interaction of Marxist and Buddhist ideas and practices has informed Breytenbach’s politics in three contexts: his initial exploration of a radical philosophy of history in his poetry (“Bruin reisbrief”, “Brown travel letter”); his role in the underground politics of Okhela in the 1970s; his reflections on politics and social change in his prison and prison-related writings. Key words: Zen communism, anti-apartheid movement, liberation, dialectic.

Mapping Femininity as Self-reflection Strategy in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s ‘Travel Letters’

Mapping Femininity as Self-reflection Strategy in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s ‘Travel Letters’

Giacomo Costantino Beltrami (1779-1855) nella letteratura western

The essay focuses on Beltrami’s Decouverte des sources du Mississippi (1824), which directly influenced The Last of the Mohicans (1826), one of the most famous novels by James Fenimore Cooper. The analysis of the two works shows how the same descriptions, dialogues, settings and characters where the action took place, depend on forms of plagiarism as Beltrami himself wrote in some of his travel letters. Furthermore the essay highlights the historical, biographical, and anthropological elements useful for understanding the historical framework in which Beltrami worked, and shows his new perspective on the Native American people.

Encountering Foreignness: a Transformation of Self

The introduction to The Englishman Abroad – an anthology of travel letters – makes the following statement: “The truth is that, far from loving foreign travel, the English have a curious love-hate towards it. The born traveller – the man who is without prejudices, who sets out wanting to learn rather than to criticize, who is stimulated by oddity, who recognizes that every man is his brother, however strange and ludicrous he may be in dress and appearance – has always been comparatively rare....

Barbara Bodichon’s travel writing: her epistolary articulation of Bildung

English painter Barbara Bodichon received a dynamic home education, consisting of engaging lessons, reading sessions, family discussions, sketching excursions, and trips at home and abroad. As an adult, Bodichon led a nomadic life, living between Algeria and England and travelling across Europe and America. Seeking to unpack travelling and travel letters as sources of learning, this paper studies Bodichon’s correspondence as epistolary articulations of her Bildung (self-cultivation). It argues that, conforming to Bildung’s idea of forging one’s individuality in interaction with the world, her travelling provided her with a variety of settings through which she extended towards the unknown and incorporated it into her sense of being. In turn, letters functioned as forums where she made sense of encountering the difference through which she individualised her subjectivity. Notwithstanding, a revised reading of Bildung permits teasing out to what extent Bodichon’s self-cultivation was developed at the expense of certain social categories.

Writing in the Masculine: Gertrude Lowthian Bell, Gender, and Empire

Succeeding as a woman in the male-dominated fields of archaeology, geography, and statecraft in the early twentieth century was an unusual achievement for Gertrude Lowthian Bell (1868–1926), and her life seems at odds with stereotypes about the marginalization of and restrictions placed on women in this period. As a woman, Bell occupies one of the sandy margins of history, but as a white, aristocratic, educated, professional, British woman, her feet also rested on the firm foundations of the British Empire. Rather than rebel against gender convention, Bell employed masculine and imperialist strategies in her writing and career to place herself within communities of knowledge and power. Her travel narratives, government works, diaries, and letters reveal the careful navigation of gender and class expectations necessary to gain a unique position in the intellectual and imperial establishments of her time.

Night Time and Entangled Spaces on Early Modern Caribbean Sugar Plantations

This article analyzes the temporal and spatial regimes on early modern Caribbean sugar plantations by examining ways in which slaves spent their leisure hours. Drawing from travel narratives, letters, and historical works, it discusses how slaves engaged in activities of their choice, most of which took place at night and were shaped by conditions peculiar to night time. In discussing slaves’ activities during their free time, this study argues that night time on Caribbean plantations created a particular kind of space. First, it created physical spaces that were profoundly different at night than they were by day, which to some extent levelled many of the daytime hierarchies inherent in slave work regimes. Second, time and place on Caribbean plantations merged to create entangled spaces in which the new global order dominated by the Atlantic economy, cultural expressions of that order, and the individual lives of slaves were all present.

Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist by Anne Boyd Rioux

Reviewed by: Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist by Anne Boyd Rioux Donna M. Campbell (bio) Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist, by Anne Boyd Rioux. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2016. xix + 391 pp. Cloth. $32.95. Anne Boyd Rioux opens her excellent new biography of Constance Fenimore Woolson with two indelible images that are the sum total of what most readers know about the author: in the first, "a woman jumps from the third-story window of her Venetian palazzo"; in the second, weeks later, a distraught Henry James sits in a boat in the middle of a Venetian lagoon, trying helplessly to submerge both the dresses and the record of their friendship, but the dresses "billow up like black balloons" (xiii). Unlike the dresses, Woolson's critical reputation has been less than buoyant in the century since her death, although an edition of her complete letters (Complete [End Page 88] Letters of Constance Fenimore Woolson, 2012), numerous book-length critical studies and articles employing feminist approaches, and Rioux's new collection of Woolson's stories should do much to restore her reputation. Rioux's carefully chosen title, Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist, signals this revival and Woolson's struggle for acceptance, for it echoes James's Portrait of a Lady, the work of an author whose reputation has shaded if not entirely effaced Woolson's own in literary history. "Lady," too, is particularly apposite, for Rioux's running theme is what the literary world might have made of Woolson had they treated her as simply a "novelist" without the diminishing modifier "lady." The book is thus a twofold portrait, not only of Woolson but of the literary world of high-culture magazines and publishers in which she found success but struggled to create a kind of writing that relied neither on the prosaic lack of idealism, as she saw it, in Howellsian realism, or the bloodless analytics of Jamesian psychology. Drawing extensively on new archival information and letters, Rioux chronicles the growth of Woolson as an artist in her own right, beginning with her early life in Cleveland and on Mackinac Island, her schooling at Madame Chegaray's in New York, and the early deaths of two of her sisters and father before her career began in earnest. A combination of her promise as a writer, her brother-in-law, and the middle name that linked her with her famous great-uncle James Fenimore Cooper brought Woolson to the attention of Henry Mills Alden at Harper & Brothers, which began publishing her work almost immediately. Beginning with travel letters for the Cleveland Herald and a prizewinning novel for children, The Old Stone House, that she later disowned, Woolson found her métier in the currently fashionable genre of regionalist or local color writing. Unlike regionalist writers such as Sara Orne Jewett and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, however, who maintained a razor-sharp focus on the regions they knew best, Wo-olson wrote of the lives and customs she found in various regions, from Michigan, St. Augustine, the Reconstruction-era South, and Asheville, North Carolina. Her first regional story, "St. Clair Flats" appeared the Atlantic Monthly in 1873 and according to Rioux was "probably her best early work" (82), later collected with other tales in Castle Nowhere: Lake-Country Sketches (1875). In search of a healthful climate, Woolson traveled the east coast with her invalid mother, and, after her mother's death, moved to Europe, living for a time in Oxford, visiting Egypt, and spending her happiest years at Bellosguardo, near Florence, Italy, before moving to Venice, where she died in 1894. [End Page 89] In assessing Woolson's career, Rioux shows how Woolson developed her own style and perspective, challenging reviewers who expected a "sweet" style from a woman novelist with, as she told one correspondent, "such a horror of 'pretty,' 'sweet' writing" that she was willing to risk "a style that was ugly and bitter, provided it was also strong" (76). Male authors and editors, including E. C. Stedman, Henry Mills Alden, and, for a time, W. D. Howells, provided early guidance but did not always...

British High Churchmen, Continental Church Tourism and the Roman Connection in the Nineteenth Century

This article examines accounts of continental church life to be found in the travel journals, letters and books of leading High Church Anglicans in the nineteenth century. It argues that these constitute a neglected source of evidence for understanding the interaction between continental church developments and the High Church revival in Anglicanism. It focuses particularly on accounts of travel in Catholic countries, and concludes that there are good reasons for assuming that experience of Catholic worship on the continent influenced High Church attitudes towards liturgical and ritual reform in Anglicanism.