The Wonder of Travel Fiction, Tourism and the Social Construction of the Nostalgic

The aim of this book is to bring into focus some of the major moves in western discourses about tourism and travel writing from the early Victorian to the late modern or post-western age. It offers a series of readings connecting the work of travel writers as diverse as Alexander Kinglake, William Cobbett, George Henry Borrow, E.M. Forster and Bruce Chatwin to their respective cultural and material contexts. The grounding model is that of travel writing as a form of cultural intervention and the individual text as an artificial yet intermediary space that constantly stimulates the travellers' consciousness, moving them to revise judgements passed on their own as well as on the other culture. In individual chapters, the study explores different stages of revision in travel discourse since the late-romantic age, surveys new touristic models installed in the place of received notions of picturesque or adventurous travel and analyses the role of exotic and nostalgic registers in the construction of cultural value.