Chapter 10 - Writing travel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
Summary
Travel is a creative act.
Paul TherouxTravel writing creates worlds, it does not simply discover them.
Peter BishopIt will be evident by now that the contexts of and motivation for travel vary enormously, across and within periods. The same is true of travel writing. Authors of travel accounts may write primarily for themselves or for others (e.g., governments, sponsors, societies, expedition leaders, family and friends). The advice given to travellers differs accordingly, depending on the historical age, the type of travel, the medium employed for the travel narratives and the target audience. Francis Bacon, writing in 1615, advises young men to ‘have some entrance into the language’ before they travel and to be accompanied by ‘a servant, or tutor, as knoweth the country’. The gentleman traveller should keep a diary, should not stay long in any one town or city, should change his accommodation from one end of town to another so as to get better acquainted with it, and should see and visit eminent persons. Bacon instructs his readers:
The things to be seen and observed are: the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities, and towns, and so the heavens and harbors; antiquities and ruins; libraries; colleges, disputations, and lectures, where any are; shipping and navies; houses and gardens of state and pleasure, near great cities; armories; arsenals; magazines; exchanges; burses; warehouses; exercises of horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes; cabinets and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable, in the places where they go. After all which, the tutors, or servants, ought to make diligent inquiry. As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men need not to be put in mind of them; yet are they not to be neglected.
This is travel report as inventory, supplying information with no interest in ambiguity, uncertainty or imagination.
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- The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing , pp. 149 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013