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Travel literature - History

Travel literature - History: Encyclopedia II - Travel literature - History

One of the earliest known records of taking pleasure in travel, of traveling for the sake of travel and writing about it, is Petrarch's ascent of Mount Ventoux in 1336. He states that he went to the mountaintop for the pleasure of seeing the top of the famous height. His companions who stayed at the bottom he called frigida incuriositas ("a cold lack of curiosity"). He then wrote about his climb, making allegorical comparisons between climbing the ...

Travel literature: Encyclopedia II - Travel literature - History

Travel literature - History

One of the earliest known records of taking pleasure in travel, of traveling for the sake of travel and writing about it, is Petrarch's ascent of Mount Ventoux in 1336. He states that he went to the mountaintop for the pleasure of seeing the top of the famous height. His companions who stayed at the bottom he called frigida incuriositas ("a cold lack of curiosity"). He then wrote about his climb, making allegorical comparisons between climbing the mountain and his own moral progress in life.

Michault Taillement, a poet for the Duke of Burgandy, traveled through the Jura Mountains in 1430 and left us with his personal reflections, his horrified reaction to the sheer rock faces, and the terrifying thunderous cascades of mountain streams. Antoine de la Sale, author of Petit Jehan de Saintre, climbed to the crater of a volcano in the Lipari Islands in 1407, leaving us with his impressions. "Councils of mad youth" were his stated reasons for going. In the mid 15th century Gilles Le Bouvier in his Le livre de la description des pays gave us the best reason to travel and write:

Because many people of diverse nations and countries delight and take pleasure, as I have done in times 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.

In 1589 Richard Hakluyt published Voyages, a foundational text of the travel literature genre.

Other later examples of travel literature include the Grand Tour European nobles would take of Europe to see the art and architecture of old civilizations. One tourism literature pioneer was Robert Louis Stevenson.