Writing up the Trip: From Montaigne to Le Clézio

Abstract

The text shows how since the 16th century, the itineraries and meaning of the trip –from pilgrimages, to study trips and from there to the Grand Tour, with more destinations, and from the to latter to pleasure trips– have changed and therefore, the way they are written about. The desire to feel and express travel feelings led to a new form of writing involving the presentation of new aesthetic codes. The article reflects how until the first decades of the 19th century, the scientific travel story prided itself on the parsimony of its statements and its lack of style and how, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, trips became the province of literature in which printing required a new form of writing. “Impressions ceased to have any other usefulness than themselves. They became an end in themselves, which travelers had started looking for with the sole purpose of enjoying them.” Under the sign of romanticism, the greatest writers devoted themselves to the genre. These pages show the evolution of the story from the quality of the objects observed to the style of the observer, where the artistic dimension acquires enormous importance.