Travel/representations : conventions, practices and performances

• Main Author: Smyth, F. T.
• Published: University of Edinburgh 2009
• Subjects: 306
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.662216

This thesis explores the intersections between conventions of travel and individual travellers’ representations of their travel practices, identities and performance. Part one explores and analyses travel conventions, broadly conceived, around ideas about ‘the art of travel’ and how these overlap with individual travellers’ values and interests to form their constructions of ‘good travel practice’. Two interconnected bodies of literature in particular, both published over a lengthy time-period, are examined for this purpose: writing which is reflective on the nature of the travel experience, and the more prescriptive genre of travel guidebooks. Part Two explores women’s travel writings, taking as its case studies the diaries and letters of prominent women travellers written across the twentieth century. The ways each of the writers narrates her relationship to constraints in the context of travel is examined, including, for example, those of ‘normative’ femininity, familial influence, and physical and bureaucratic restrictions on mobility. Part three addresses the centrality of visual images in many aspects of travel, both in the production of travel conventions and also in travellers’ own representations of travelling. Taking women’s online travel diaries as case studies, travel photography is considered alongside travel writing and the performative aspects of travel representations are highlighted.