Conclusions

Travel Literature comprises the literary genre in its broad sense and application.

It includes written literature, adventure literature, exploration, nature writing, mountain literature, guide books, diaries of traveller‟s experiences and accounts of visits to foreign countries, planets and remote places.

Travel literature gained currency during the Song Dynasty (960 – 1279) of medieval China. The genre was described as travel record or travel writing. It was commonly written as essay, diary and prose forms. The places and experiences of each traveller writer often dictated the type of material compositions that make up such travel texts. For instance, the travel literature authors, Fan Chengda (1126 – 1193) and Xu Xiake (1587 – 1641), used geographical and topographical information/material comprehensively in their writing.

Early examples of travel writing popular in Britain includes the 14th century travel experiences of Sir John Mandeville; the account of Marco Polo‟s journey to China; Queen Elizabeth 1(who reigned between 1558 to 1603) encouraged her nationals to travel wide and discover new worlds and terrains. She sponsored the trips and travel missions of many English explorers, notably Sir Francis Drake.

Her reign is widely called the Age of Exploration. The exploits of famous English explorers like Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh in the discovery of Americas and West Indies are widely read and have continued to inspire poets, novelists and general writers, especially in the 17th century Romantic period.

Other examples of travel literature are Thomas Coryat‟s accounts of his travels through Europe and to India; other travel literature texts include those written by Daniel Defoe, David Livingstone, a missionary explorer, Mary Kingsley, Jan Morris, Eric Newby, Bill Bryson, who explored England, Redmond Hanlen, who travelled up the Congo and the Amazon, the Australian, Robin Davidson, who traveled the Australian desert on a camel‟s back. Poets like Pausania gave a vivid description of Greece in his travel memoir, Description of Greece, in the 2nd century; so also are Ibn Jubayr (1145 – 1214) and Ibn Batutta (1304 – 1377), who wrote travel journals. Such experience was common in medieval Arabic literature.

Sometimes, a travel writer may engage in travel and travel writing for the sake of mere interest and pleasure of seeing the unknown. Such was the case of Petrarch (1304 – 1374) who wrote about his exploration of Mount Venloux in 1336. He explained that he traveled to the top of the mountain for sheer pleasure of seeing the top of the mountain‟s famous height. His companions, who waited below the mountain, he labelled, frigida incuriositas, “a cold lack of curiosity”. The writer then described his climb experience, comparing his moral experience in life with climbing the mountain as well as the allegory of his climb. His travel experience was similar to that of Michault Taillevent, a poet and Duke of Wellington, who in 1430 travelled through the Jura Mountains, leaving his readers with the frightening reflections of the rock and flaming mountain streams. The emotional

tremor created by the climb to the crater of a volcano in the Lipari Islands in 1407 is described vividly in his travel memoirs. There is also the 15^th century travel memoir of the French writer, Antoine de la Sale (1386 – 1460), Petit Jehan de Saintre, where he ascribed the reason for his travel adventure to “Councils of Mad Youths”, that is, youthful madness. In the same vein, Gilles le Bouvier in his Livre de la Description Des Pays expressed his reason for travel:

Because many people of diverse nations and countries delight and take pleasure, as I have done past, in seeing the world and things therein and also because many wish to know without going there, and others wish to see, go and travel. I have begun this little book.

Other examples of travel writings or book of travel, as it is commonly called, include the experiences of clergies and aristocrats. Some, driven by pleasure, leisurely travelled to Europe to learn about architecture and the Arts; some were driven by tourism; a ready example of this was Robert Louis Stevenson (1879) who wrote about his travels in the Cevenne (France). Other popular travel narratives also explored colonial and postcolonial experiences. Examples include Daniel Defoe‟s Robinson Crusoe, Jonathan Swift‟s Gulliver’s Travels, as well as Joseph Conrad‟s Heart of Darkness. Even though these examples are fictional narratives, the experiences of the travelers/writers show the adventure, risks and new knowledge they gained from their trips.

Some travellers document their experiences in the form of a diary, which is later edited and published. Such works are usually based on the actual experience and observation of the writer on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis, depending on the nature of the travel and convenience. Examples of such works are The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, published in 1786 by James Boswell. The interesting travel diary of Che Guevara – The Motorcycle Diaries – documents the places visited by the traveller. The observatory description of Greece, a travel narrative of the same title written by Pausania in the 2nd century AD, belongs to this category. Some other travel literature serves as a form of observation on a people, culture and their nation. For instance, the Trinidadian, V.S. Naipaul‟s India: A Wounded Civilization. The writer settled in an area for a period where he observed the peoples‟ culture, tradition, religion and daily interactions, and documented these experiences for posterity. Other examples of this type of travel literature include Deborah Tall‟s The Island of the White Cow, Peter Mayle‟s A Year in Provence, Johnson Braid‟s A Walk Up the Town of the Red People.

In most cases, travels and nature intermingle in writings and observations, as seen in the works of Sally Carigher and Ivan T. Sanderson, Terry Hat, Louis Bright, Gerald Durrel as well as Ball Braide, Crane Edith, Anderson Thurber and Horgan Porter. Then we have naturalist writers who write about the adventures they experienced in the line of duty. Examples are Charles Darwin, who wrote an account of the journey of HMS Beagle at the fusion of science, natural history and travels; Charles Dickens‟ American Notes (1842); D. H. Lawrence‟s Twilight in Italy and Other Essays (1916) and Morning in Mexico and Other Essays

(1927); John Steinbeck‟s Travels with Charley: In Search of America; Hilaire Belloc‟s The Path to Rome (1902); and Mary Wollstoncraft‟s Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796).

Some other adventurous writings are compositions coloured with nostalgia, as the feeling of departure from relations and loved ones combined with fear of the unknown characterised their writings. This is evident in the works of the following travel writers in the extracts seen below:

The will fell on me to embark on a journey that I had contemplated over the years. The strong will to go engaged my desire and reluctance to part with my love ones back home in England. More difficult was how to say a good bye to my wife, children and friends. But, how will I receive the friendly palms that will wave me off the shores of England at least for the brief separation? How will I look back to return a wave of the hand to the land that nursed me? But, the will to leave killed other wills in me and I said good bye to England and left for the inviting nobility, succumbed to the allure of Paris.

I had resolved on a voyage around the world, and as the wind of the morning of April 24, 1895 was fair, at noon I weighed anchor, set sail… A thrilling pulse beat high in me. My step was light on deck in the crisp air. I felt there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood.

I was set for a journey, an adventure I had long contemplated, and now this minute, this hour, this day, the time has come for me to take a ride, in the wing of time, time that will dictate my pace, that determines man‟s wills, the very adventure that is his entire life. Time, I welcome you time, the arbiter, the sole determinant of the thought that conceived the journey I had long thought of a need to embark upon. Yes, I dare not look back at those I left behind with love, or else, I may be set Fig. 1

Ben Hillary First Travel to France 1982

A departure described

Fig. 2

Joshua Slocum‟s Sail from

Boston, Sailing AloneAround the World

A departure described (1898)

Fig. 3

Thomas West‟s Sail from

London to India Mountain

A departure described (1964)

back, I also dare not look back in anger, otherwise, it may be difficult for me to roll off the stone of vengeance locked up in me. And, now, I am good to go to that mountain, the mountain that had haunted my dream, good to go, I go…

In recent times, travel literature has emerged as a field of study with its distinct platforms, having journals, monographs, anthologies, organisations and conferences. Examples include Paul Fussel‟s Abroad (1980); Marianna Torgovnick‟s Gone Primitive: Modern Intellects, Savage Minds (1990); and Dennis Porter‟s Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing.