Travel Writing (The New Critical Idiom)

The new edition of Travel Writing is an accessible and interdisciplinary guide to this prolific and popular literary genre. Carl Thompson offers a clear and concise overview of the long history of travel writing from the ancient world to the present day.Considering a wide range of primary sources from Sir Walter Raleigh to Jenny Diski, the extensively updated second edition:introduces the genre and outlines key debates within the field, such as gender, sexuality, postcolonial studies, and visual culture;explores the genre’s autobiographical dimensions and different approaches for depicting the self;surveys a range of canonical and more marginal works, featuring new discussion of refugee and migrant narratives and LGBTQ travel writing;includes a new chapter walking readers through the developments in the genre since the first edition, such as online forms, environmentalism and ecocriticism, and travel writing as an increasingly transnational, multicultural genre.With a comprehensive glossary and further reading, Travel Writing, Second Edition is an ideal primer to the genre for students – bridging the gap between distant times and distant places – as well as offering literary studies scholars an essential overview of current debates in the field. Read more