Travel Scepticism: On a Certain Critical Tone in Travel Literature

✍ Scribed by Metz, Bernhard

• Book ID: 118183428
• Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: German
• Weight: 360 KB
• Volume: 46
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-7982
• DOI: 10.1515/arcadia-2011-0017

✦ Synopsis

Travel Scepticism: On a Certain Critical Tone in Travel Literature

Travel scepticism is a general reservation against travelling, the opposite of the enthusiasm found in travelogues, discovery and adventure stories. It refutes the idea that travelling leads to knowledge or even wisdom. Instead, it argues that traveling is idle and vain, useless and dangerous. It claims that staying at home would have been the better choice. Yet, paradoxically, travelling is the only way to learn that it would have been wiser not to travel. Texts by Charles Baudelaire, Mark Twain, Paul Theroux, Julio Cortµzar and Carol Dunlop as well as Ingomar von Kieseritzky are all part of the genre and tradition of travel literature, albeit in a beautifully twisted and funny way.

Meinen Sie Zürich zum Beispiel Sei eine tiefere