Saturday, 17 February 2018

On Travelogues and Travel Writing - I

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had its origins as a series for BBC radio, first broadcast in 1978. After a trip across Europe, inspired by the format of practical travel guides such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe by Ken Welsh, Adams set out to write a guide to the mysteries of the galaxy.

In 1985, Adams took an assignment to travel to various locations around the world in the company of a zoologist, documenting a search for specimens of the world’s most endangered species. This resulted in both the radio series and the nonfiction book Last Chance to See (1990). Although the book was not as commercially successful as his novels, Adams referred to the book as one of the most rewarding projects on which he had ever worked. This reflects a common theme in Adams’s work regarding the doubleedged sword of technology, which can provide great advancements for humanity but also lead to destruction of the natural world.

There are a host of other fantastic travels to other worlds and dimensions as a means of pointing out our own society’s foibles. They are -

Gulliver’s Travels (1826), a satire by Jonathan Swift. Swift applied his sharp wit to this ‘‘travelogue’’ of an innocent abroad in strange and unheard-of countries.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), a novel by Lewis Carroll. What started as a story told to pass the time on a boat trip turned into a novel that plays with nonsense, logic, and morality lessons in a baffling and surreal fantasy land.

Other Worlds (first published in two parts, 1657 and 1662), fantasy stories by Cyrano de Bergerac. The real-life seventeenth-century swashbuckler wrote a series of fantastic stories describing his fictional journeys to the Moon and Sun and his encounters with the creatures who lived there.

S. Y. Agnon’s first acclaimed novel, The Bridal Canopy (1931), concerns a Hasidic rabbi who travels through nineteenth century Galicia seeking a dowry for his daughters.

The Lost Steps (1953), is a novel by Alejo Carpentier. The protagonist of this novel travels from New York into the Amazonian jungle: as he progresses, time seems to move backward.

Yehuda Amichai’s ‘‘Travels of the Last Benjamin of Tudela’’ is a sequence of fifty-seven
poems in which Amichai analyzes his Jewish identity by comparing his life story with legends of a wandering medieval rabbi. Published separately in book-length form as Travels in 1986, this work also appears in his Selected Poetry (1986), a compilation of verse from ten volumes published over a thirty-year period.

Hans Christian Andersen has also published a poetic travel book, Pictures of Sweden (1851),

Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), is a novel by Marge Piercy. Like Atwood, Piercy writes poetry and fiction with a feminist bent. This novel tells the story of a time-traveling psychiatric patient at Bellevue Hospital.

W. H. Auden traveled in Weimar Republic, Germany. In 1937 he went with Mac-Neice to Iceland and in 1938 with Isherwood to China. The literary results of these journeys were collaborations: with MacNeice, Letters from Iceland (1937), and with Isherwood, Journey to a War (1939).

Matsuo Basho made pilgrimages, visiting religious and secular sites, spreading his ideas on haiku to fellow poets, and often begging alms for subsistence. His prose and haiku recollections of these travels, especially The Narrow Road to the Deep North, are considered his most accomplished and lasting literary works. Between journeys, he spent much of his time living and writing in secluded huts in the wilderness.

Invisible Cities (1972), is a work of fiction by Italo Calvino. Calvino’s book is set up as Marco Polo’s dreamlike recollection of his travels to Kublai Khan, but there is no linear path through the story or the travels.

He wrote poetry, fiction, history, travel pieces, and works on topography, as well as articles and essays in a wide variety of modes including ridicule, parody, satire, and logical argumentation.

to be contd...

Routledge/Gale’s Encylopedia 
Image: TravelWiththeCam.Wordpress.Com

No comments:

Post a Comment