Travel Writing – The Common Thread
The kinds of travel literature, or certainly take a trip authors, can be broadly classified. Top of the list are travel authors who are tourists by profession and authors by occupation. It is most likely no surprise that authors in this sub-genre are frequently short-fused about travel and undoubtedly the act of travel writing.
There are travel works that are more along the lines of essays, such as V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Wounded Civilization, in which a journey ends up being the peg on which to hang reflections and significant philosophizing about countries, individuals, politics and culture. What of Sally Carrighar, Ivan T. Sanderson who likewise compose to support their clinical aspirations. Probably this sub-genre begun when Charles Darwin carried out the trip on HMS Beagle and returned to compose his popular account of the journey, which incorporated science, natural history and travel.
There is what I call travel authors who reversed into the category. Here authors who have actually developed their names in other categories travel and attempt their hand at travel writing.
Some experts and critics state that imaginary travelogues (accounts of journeys that are fictional and typically to fictional locations) make up a big percentage of travel literature. They argue that no one truly understands where the travel accounts of Marco Polo and John Mandeville stopped being truth and ended up being fiction. Well, that does not make any imaginary journey travel writing, in my book.
There are the totally fictional journeys that form part of the literary heritage however which in my view can not be interpreted as travel literature of any kind. Homer’s Odyssey, Danté’s Divine Comedy, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Voltaire’s Candide … The list goes on and on … One typical thread does run through all of travel literature. It is the tourist’s– and the reader’s– limitless fascination with what lies over the next horizon, simply out of sight and prepared to be found.
The kinds of travel literature, or certainly take a trip authors, can be broadly classified. Top of the list are travel authors who are tourists by profession and authors by occupation. It is most likely no surprise that authors in this sub-genre are frequently short-fused about travel and certainly the act of travel writing. Perhaps this sub-genre begun when Charles Darwin carried out the trip on HMS Beagle and returned to compose his well-known account of the journey, which incorporated science, natural history and travel.
Here authors who have actually developed their names in other categories travel and attempt their hand at travel writing.