Travel Writing and Cultural Memory / Ecriture du voyage et memoire culturelle

The present volume looks at the relation between travel writing and cultural memory from a variety of perspectives, ranging from theoretical concerns with genres and conventions to detailed analyses of single texts. As befits the topic, the contributions roam far and wide, both geographically and historically. Some detail early Portuguese voyages of discovery, particularly to the East. Others depict encounters between Early, and not so early, Modern Western travelers and their Other interlocutors. Still others focus on travel writings as literature. Voyages and voyaging in literature form the subject of the last category of essays gathered here. Amongst the authors discussed are Fernao Mendes Pinto, Jean de Sponde, Furtado de Mendonca, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, Elsa Morante, Ingeborg Bachmann, Sophia Andresen, Paul Claudel, Graham Greene, Valery Larbaud, David Mourao-Ferreira, J.M.G. le Clezio, Jose Saramago, Michel Leiris, and Claude Levi-Strauss. The volume concludes with an essay by the French-Lebanese author Salah Stetie.