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What is Travel Writing as a field of research?
Travel writing is a dynamic and multifaceted field of intersection between literary studies, cultural history, anthropology, postcolonial, and transcultural studies. Travelers throughout history have recorded their experiences, producing a rich corpus of texts that include travel diaries, memoirs, geographical descriptions, ethnographic accounts, and reflective narratives on personal transformation. These writings not only document encounters with foreign lands but also serve as records of evolving self-perception and awareness, making them crucial sources permitting to trace back individual maturation, as travellers' inward journeys coincide with their physical dislocation. How do I contribute to this field? One of the key aspects of travel writing in my perspective is its capacity to interrogate and dissolve cultural identity. The act of travel inherently involves crossing borders—both physical and conceptual—and leads to shifts in perspective. Travelers frequently experience moments of cultural dissonance, where their preconceived notions about the world are challenged, resulting in deep introspection. This transformative potential is especially evident in narratives where travel is not merely an external journey but an inward one, prompting reflections on selfhood, belonging, the limits of cultural and aesthetic understanding. Among the numerous themes explored in travel writing from the Romantic period to contemporary times, the Grand Tour and Oriental journey hold a special place. European writers, scholars, and adventurers have long been fascinated by the East, producing extensive literature that reflects their aspirations, fantasies, and interactions with the cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. My research has delved into the biographies of explorers and converts who sought to penetrate what they perceived as the enigmatic and mystical heart of the Desert. Some of these travelers successfully realized their ambitions, embarking on transformative journeys into the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. The experience of the hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, performed by Europeans, represents a particularly intriguing dimension of this phenomenon. The accounts of figures such as Richard Burton, Evelyn Cobbold, and Titus Burckhardt provide remarkable insights into the ways in which non-Muslim observers attempted to understand and integrate into Islamic culture, including their religious convertion. Others, however, could only dream of reaching the inaccessible heart of Arabia. The Polish nobleman and adventurer Wacław Rzewuski, for instance, became legendary for his attempts to assimilate into Bedouin culture and his vivid descriptions of the Arabian world. Yet, despite his aspirations, Arabia remained partly an imagined space for him, shaped as much by Romantic ideals as by actual experience. A similar longing permeates the work of Juliusz Słowacki, a Romantic poet who wove Rzewuski’s legend into his literary imagination, further mystifying the figure of the wanderer in the East. Travel writing, therefore, is more than a mere record of movement across geographical spaces—it is a profound exploration of the self in relation to the Other. The study these texts offers valuable insight into the ways in which cultural encounters shape identities and individual biographies, influence perceptions of foreignness, and contribute to the evolving discourse on transcultural experience. As a research field, travel writing continues to reveal the fluidity of cultural boundaries and the enduring allure of the unknown. |
essays on the journeys of Europeans to the Orient
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“Stawanie się Orientem. Wyprawy Europejczyków do Mekki jako doświadczenie transkulturowe późnej epoki kolonialnej” [“Becoming the Orient. European travels to Mecca as a transcultural experience of the late colonial period”], Litteraria Copernicana, no 1(29)/2019, p. 111-119. ISSN 1899-315X
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/1 0.12775/LC.2019.009 http://apcz.umk.pl/czasopisma/index.php/LC/article/view/LC.2019.009 The aim of this paper is to reflect on the European hajj (travel to Mecca) as a transcultural experience in the context of the late colonial period. The interpretation of the case of Lawrence of Arabia, proposed in the Orientalism by Edward Said, is taken for the starting point. This classical diagnosis is confronted with the narrations speaking about the travel into the heart of Arabia as a spiritual journey, read as a testimony of a progressive overcoming of the orientalization as a condition limiting, in the first place, the Western subject, unable of experiencing fully the orientalized reality. After the exploration of Richard Burton, the figures of the converts from the first half of the 20th century, such as Harry St. John Bridger Philby, Evelyn Cobbold and Muhammad Asad gradually achieve a deepened transcultural experience on the road to Mecca. |
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"Friendships of the Desert. The Europeans in Arabia", De Amicitia. Transdisciplinary Studies in Friendship, Katarzyna Marciniak, Elżbieta Olechowska (eds.), Warsaw, Faculty of „Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw, 2016, p. 189-199. ISBN 978-83-63636-58-6
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