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The present article endeavours to identify and tackle a corpus of texts written by both major and minor Romanian authors of the 19th century, beginning with the pre-romantic years, the 1848, "Paşoptist", romanticism and the period immediately after 1848, going through the second half of the century, the age of the plenary affirmation for the "Romanian classics", and on to the turn of the 20th century and beyond. The object of my analysis is the presence of Italy, as a historical, geographical and cultural space, in the Romanian writers' field of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on travel stories which the author believes makes everyone to become teachers and mentors. He notes that travel stories are never-ending creative products which constantly shift in shape as perspectives change when listeners become role-players of their own stories. He says that is a type of oral narration in which consumers are temporarily passive recipients but later become protagonists and creators of new stories and that it fulfills a basic need inherent in humans.

This paper compares the economic image of seventeenth-century Spain given by foreign travellers with that offered by the arbitristas, examining the principal similarities and differences. Specifically, it analyses the following issues: the consideration of the natural resources base, the vision of national character and its relation to productive activities, and the perception of the economic situation and the causes of backwardness. The aim is to contrast the views of those who were thinking 'from the inside' about the causes of the evident decline of the country, with the free and uncensored gaze of foreign visitors, who, despite the obvious constraints and limitations, tended to focus on the most striking and different aspects they found compared to the reality of their own countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines on the Arabic translation written by Joseph Justus Scaliger and held in the Oriental collections of Leiden University about the Dutch mercantile expeditions to the East Indies. It discusses the reputation of Scaliger in the field of European humanism, the history of the manuscript, and the use of Arabic language as a means of diplomatic communication between the courts of Christian Europe and Muslim Southeast Asia.

An introduction is presented to the main theme of the issue focusing on the representation of real and spiritual voyages in early Christian literature including topics such as the ascension of prophet Isaiah, the missionary journeys of Saint Paul the Apostle, and history of peregrinations.

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A literary criticism of the book "Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws," by Quaker botanist William Bartram is presented. It discusses the concerns on independence and U.S. nationhood expressed by Bartram in the book, the political dimension and purpose of the book and Bartram's perception of the term "Gulf" as the object-cause of desire.

William Beckford (1760–1844) is known chiefly as a collector, bibliophile, Orientalist, and author of the Gothic novel Vathek. In his early life, he was also an inveterate traveller, and the published and unpublished writing he produced on the basis of his travels vastly outweighed his fictional output, but has received surprisingly little critical attention by comparison. Travel books were a prominent part of Beckford’s nationally celebrated library, and, as was his habit with books of all kinds, he made careful notes on his reading, extracting interesting passages and occasionally inserting framing remarks or observations of his own. This article briefly reviews Beckford’s career as a traveller and travel writer as context for a study of his practices and preferences as a travel reader, using as its raw material, compilations of his reading notes, and books formerly owned by Beckford (with manuscript notes intact), held by the Bodleian Library. Whereas Beckford’s travel writing displays in abundance those qualities of interiority and imaginative freedom long synonymous with the idea of romantic travel, as a travel reader he shows a keen interest in the empirical content of books, with a particular eye for landscape descriptions, natural history, and anthropological curiosities. At the same time, he is capable of talking directly and animatedly to books or their authors, and is occasionally provoked into commenting on social or political matters. The article is a case study on the history of reading, with a rare focus on the popular romantic genre of travel literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay considers the northern-American leg of the Malaspina expedition (1789 1794) in the context of Alessandro Malaspina's life and other European voyages undertaken during the Age of Enlightenment. In particular, it analyzes the confidential correspondence exchanged prior to departure between Malaspina and the Spanish Minister of the Marine and contrasts it to the Journal of the Voyage by Alejandro Malaspina, which was originally compiled in Spanish and published in 1855. This examination points out a discrepancy between the order to search for the Northwest Passage, the captain's failure to detect the Passage, and his subsequent denial that he had set out on a voyage of discovery. It details why Malaspina's disclaimers should be read as an attempted justification for not having rewarded Spain - the country that he was faithfully serving - with any new discoveries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike her successful "Life in Mexico" (1843), which enjoyed the patronage of the American historian William Hickling Prescott, Frances Calderón de la Barca's "The Attaché in Madrid" (1856) has received little critical attention. Published anonymously in New York as the work of a young German diplomat, Calderón's travel book on Spain sheds new light on her transatlantic writing career. This study examines the dynamics of self-revelation and containment in "The Attaché," foregrounding Calderó n's imbrication in the politics of empire and her experimentation with literary gender crossing. In "The Attaché," Calderón deploys maleness not only as a cover, but also to contest nineteenth-century US discourse on Spanish decadence and to counter rhetorical strategies of domination common to male-authored accounts of Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the nonfiction travel writings of English author Anthony Trollope. It considers how Trollope's writings depict Victorian era racism and prejudice, British cultural imperialism, British civilization, and British and Irish national identity and national characteristics. Some of the books considered include "The West Indies and the Spanish Main," "Travelling Sketches," "South Africa," and "The Tireless Traveller: Twenty Letters to the Liverpool Mercury, 1875." The author explores how British nineteenth-century travelers could voyage to distant countries and stay in enclaves of British civilization while abroad, giving them a biased understanding of local cultures.

Literary criticism of the book "Viaje a Italia" by Spanish author Leandro Fernández de Moratín is presented. It explores the author's literary style in his travel diary "Viaje a Italia" and compares it to the diary of his travels to England. It considers his depiction of various cities in Italy such as Bologna, Florence and Rome. The author also describes his use of 18th century and earlier travel literature.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a pioneering French aviator who helped to open airmail routes in North Africa and South America during the interwar years of the early twentieth century. He was also a celebrated author who described his piloting experiences and the relations between aviation, society and human development in several popular books. Saint-Exupery's writings contain vivid representations of landscapes, places and people from the novel perspective of the airborne observer. Based on analysis of the revised editions of most of the English-language translations of Saint-Exupery's published works, this article reveals that his writings contain a distinctive 'geography from above' in which landscapes and places are culturally constructed and myths about various 'others' are reproduced. Such a view was important: it allowed powerful visualisations to be created and communicated, and its expressions accompanied and legitimated the imperial expropriation of land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuban Studies is the property of University of Pittsburgh Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the phenomenon of the Russian travels to Europe in some Russian literatures. The paper draws a historical account of the phenomenon, starting in the 17th century and the early 18th century. According to the author, Russian literature about travels abroad differed from similar European literature, in particular from the distinctive German phenomenon known as 'Reiseliteratur'. The section also makes a conclusion that Russian travel literature could be classified in the following way: philosophical, sentimental, comparative, and missionary.

The article discusses the use of the motif of the cyclic journey in Greek literature and how the apostle Saint Luke used this motif in his Gospel. The topographical or geographical composition of these literary works is such that the story ends in the same place as it began but with the characters changed by what transpired. In the book "The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers," Diogenes Laertius tells the story of Plato's cyclic journey from Athens, Greece to Egypt and then again to Athens. Saint Luke's use of the motif probably facilitated the reception of the good news about salvation in the Hellenistic world.

The article examines myth, history and witnessing in the Caribbean poetics of female author Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. Valmore participated in covering the traces of her specific colonial experiences citing a biographical letter to Sainte-Beuve which provided critical accounts of her voyage. Details about Valmore's travel through the epicenter of the Revolutionary Caribbean events are provided.

An essay is presented on the dimensions of travel and travel writing. It observes that the fractal traveling of the researcher on travel has allowed the elaboration of a concept of the micro-cosmopolitan which is known to help thinkers in circumventing the terminal paralysis of identity logic. Furthermore, it patents the proximity of the current theoretical perspectives on travel as well as on travel writing.

Although Ludovico Ariosto always hated travelling, the Orlando furioso provides a compelling landscape of multiple locations, exotic place names, uncharted geographical spaces, and marvellous journeys. This essay examines what it might mean when the literary imagination of a home-loving poet embarks on such wondrous journeys across the new worlds of the Renaissance globe and beyond. It examines 'actual' and literary imprints on the Furioso's itineraries and then offers an assessment of the interplay between the two as a useful way of thinking about the delicate transactions between reality and literature underpinning the poem as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The monumental collection of voyages made by the De Bry family in Frankfurt (1590-1634) contained many well-known Dutch travel accounts. The De Brys, copper engravers and publishers, also copied many of the illustrations for which the Dutch narratives were rightly famous around 1600. In addition, they designed new engravings, often depicting spectacular episodes, pagan rituals and other strange habits, in order to enhance the appeal of their collection. Hence the representations of the overseas world in the De Bry collection were markedly different from those presented in the original accounts. The new Frankfurt plates were in turn imitated in the United Provinces, at the expense of more authoritative home-made designs. As a result, much of the iconography of the overseas world traditionally regarded as Dutch, was in fact constructed in a German workshop. With images travelling back and forth between Amsterdam and Frankfurt, this constituted not only an interchange of representations, but also a process of artistic copying against the accepted current of cultural influence in early modern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the representation of the Zimbabwean everyday through a narrative analysis of Doris Lessing's "African Laughter." It discusses the representation of the everyday as a bricolage of voices. The traveller is depicted as a silent witness and functions as a seismograph registering speech utterances. It also assesses how the novel manipulates the Zimbabwean everyday into a specific representation for political purposes.

This article looks at how three prominent French writers, Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Gide, two poets and a novelist, have written about travel. Their problem is not so much how to defamiliarise the familiar but to acquaint us with the strange. It explores their responses to foreign experiences and shows how much they have called upon literary conventions to shape their writing. The process of travel is an integral part of their experience. The three writers are not content merely to describe the various destinations. The journey, the process of travel, is as important - just as in Modernist works in general the focus is on the process of writing. Their travels become explorations of the medium of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section provides an overview of the works on the study of seventeenth-century Utopian literature. Paul Salzman examines the generic origins of The New Atlantis, showing how it draws upon both the Utopian and the travel narrative traditions, and comparing it to a range of other early seventeenth-century works. James Ellison's George Sandys: Travel, Colonialism and Tolerance in the Seventeenth Century offers an examination of early seventeenth-century culture through the full life of one individual. Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels. Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550-1630: An Anthology, by Andrew Hadfield, is a collection of original-spelling excerpts from primary travel accounts of the period.

The article discusses that there is sufficient evidence in the criticism of the book "Gulliver's Travels" to suggest that Jonathan Swift was thoroughly acquainted with travel literature. The inventories as well as the sale catalogue of Swift's library list a considerable stock of travel books. During the composition of the Travels, travel accounts seem to have been Swift's favorite reading. Among the travel books Swift owned was the 1625 edition of "Purchas his Pilgrimes," the most important compilation of travel accounts in the seventeenth century, whose significance as a source for "Gulliver's Travels" has been established more than once.