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Who Were The First European Travel Writers
ravel writing is a major the view he described or his
genre. Go into any bookshop account of the satisfaction of
and see the vast array of reaching the top. He introduced
travel writings aimed to appeal an entire new activity to
to every type and taste. There humanity: travel writing.
are food travel books for food
enthusiasts, historical True to the genre as well,
travelogues for the historians, Petrarch was critical of his
humorous travel books for the fellow travelers or, in this
irreverent, and every other case, those who refused to
imaginable slant on travel. But accompany him. He described his
where did this interest in the companions who stayed at the
travels of others begin? bottom of the slope frigida
incuriositas, an insult that fell
One of the earliest European just short of calling them
travel accounts, where the writer stupid. A loose translation is
traveled for the sake of travel “people with a cold lack of
and wrote about it afterwards was curiosity”. Petrarch not only
written, oddly enough, not during talked of the toil involved in
the heydays of Greece or Rome but reaching the peak but went a
in the year 1336 A.D. Petrarch, little overboard, by today’s
an Italian scholar, poet and one standard, making allegorical
of the earliest Renaissance comparisons between climbing the
humanists -- the man credited mountain and his own moral
with perfecting the sonnet and progress in life. It was a sort
making it one of the most perfect of vertical Pilgrim’s Progress,
art forms to date -- climbed but it would be several centuries
Mount Ventoux and wrote about it before John Bunyan followed
afterwards. It was a climb that Petrarch’s lead.
resulted in far more than just
Then there was Michault going there, and others wish to
Taillement, a poet for the Duke see, go, and travel, I have begun
of Burgundy, who traveled through this little book.”
the Jura Mountains in 1430 and
diarized his personal In 1589 Richard Hakluyt published
reflections, which included naked Voyages, a text which became the
terror when confronted by sheer template for the travel
rock faces and blind fear when literature genre for many
observing cascading waterfalls. centuries.
In the same era Antoine de la In the 18th century, travel
Sale, author of Petit Jehan de literature was commonly known as
Saintre, climbed to the crater of the Book of Travels, and most
a volcano in the Lipari Islands often these consisted of maritime
in 1407 and recorded his diaries and the public couldn’t
impressions. He put his impulse get enough of them. Captain James
to undertake the climb to Cook's diaries (1784) were the
“councils of mad youth”. equivalent of today's best
sellers. It was in the 18th
In the mid 15th century Gilles de century that travel writing
Bouvier gave a delightful matured as a genre. Every writer
explanation of why one should had a travel book or two and
travel and write. In his Livre de today nothing much has changed in
la description des pays he wrote: this respect.
“ Because many people of diverse
nations and countries delight and Other later examples of travel
take pleasure, as I have done in literature include accounts of
times past, in seeing the world the Grand Tour written by
and things therein, and also countless aristocrats, clergy,
because many wish to know without and others with money and leisure
time, who traveled Europe to Belle Epoque (the 1920’s).
learn about the art and Another travel literature pioneer
architecture of its past. The was Robert Louis Stevenson in the
tradition of the Grand Tour late 19th century whose “Travels
lasted well into the 20th century with a donkey” introduced a
and was still a feature of the light-hearted tone to the genre.
About the Author:
Justine has been a journalist for 20 years and is a contributor to Just The Planet, the online luxury travel magazine for independent travelers.
Published At: www.Isnare.com
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