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Image Robert Burdock
FROM THE BEGINNING, travel writing has been a key shaper of people’s perception of the world beyond their borders and of history itself.
On one level was enterprise. As merchants forged trade routes and returned with goods and reports about fantastic places and culture, this in turn compelled leaders to send more explorers. Classic examples of this include Marco Polo (13th century) as well as the crónicas of friars such as Fray Ramon Pane in the 15th century, then later, William Bartram, and Lewis and Clark.
On another level was religion. Muslim pilgrims making their hajj to Mecca wrote copious descriptions of their journey as did East Asian Buddhists devotees traveling to India to visit holy sites and to study with Buddhist masters.
Compared to our current “small world,” the lands and cultures across oceans and even over the next mountain range must have appeared vast and mysterious to people in previous generations.
But now that the world has been thoroughly google mapped, how does the modern travel writer fit into this tradition? Is ancient travel literature even relevant to study?
T.S. Eliot, in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” asserted that writers must immerse themselves in the whole of the literary tradition. That being conscious of that tradition is key to awareness and appreciation of your own time and place.
In subtle and profound ways we constantly draw resources and inspiration from the literary tradition as a whole. Eliot argued that it is better to be aware of your tradition, to consciously exist within it, than to contribute to it blindly.
This means to better realize our craft we must develop a consciousness of the tradition, from Marco Polo to Pico Iyer.
Eliot writes:
“…he is not likely to know what it is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but what is already living.”
A short list of travel writers throughout history
Rutilius Claudius Namatianus ~ A Voyage Home to Gaul
Marco Polo ~ The Travels of Marco Polo
Ibn Battuta ~ A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling
Richard Hakluyt ~ The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries
Matsuo, Bashō ~ The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
Mary Wollstonecraft ~ A Short Residence in Sweden
Herman Melville ~ Omoo
Mary Kingsley ~ Travels in West Africa
W. Somerset Maugham ~ On a Chinese Screen
Heinrich Harrer ~ Seven Years in Tibet
John Steinbeck ~ Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Laurens van der Post ~ The Lost World of the Kalahari
Jan Morris ~ Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara ~ The Motorcycle Diaries
Of course this list is by no means comprehensive and by all rights could literally be a mile long. Thousands of travel stories populate our ancient genre, but you gotta start somewhere. Enjoy interacting with the tradition of travel writing and let the words of travelers past permeate your life and writings.
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Joshywashington
Joshywashington is a Travel Media Ninja from Seattle who enjoys writing, climbing trees and strong coffee.
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While it’s consider a satire, Gulliver’s Travels, one could argue is a good example of travel writing. Who says that travel writing must be some sort of introspective, philosophical writing based on the experiences? Why can’t it really just be the story of the travel? I’d say Gulliver’s Travels, as much as any, is a good example of setting and movement, of a new people, new culture, new ideas.
My two cents.
Cheers,
Jared Krauss
I couldn’t agree more! I love Gulliver’s Travels and thought about putting it on the short list. Great input!
Plus, who can’t love a big with miniature people? Also, he is bashing one of the biggest institutions of his day in a funny way, in a time when doing that could help you and your head become lost very quickly. You got to love the cheek he had.
And by “big” i obviously meant book; thinking too much about sizes…..back to being confused by Arabic.
Thanks for this. As a traveler and longtime expat, finding my historical context through the women writers who went before me has been a major resource….since cultural wisdom so often pools at the intersection of travel, history and women.
I post here ( http://tr.im/sb4I) and here ( http://tr.im/svz0) in more detail about how historical travelogue both connected me to the land when I lived in Southeast Asia — and made sense of my own reluctances.
I’m reading John Steinbeck’s Travel’s with Charley right now, as I’m researching a paddling guide to Michigan, and it’s helping me with the kind of narrative I’m looking for. Steinbeck is a workman-like writer whose subjects were concrete people and places. He’s a help for every travel writer.