The increased attention now devoted to studying travel writing and theory follows on the heels
of a growing critical interest in autobiography (a genre closely aligned to travel writing)
commentary on multiculturalism nationalism colonialism and post-colonialism and in
spectacle and visual culture. The essays collected here address these diverse impulses and
focus provocatively on issues of colonialism post-colonialism empire identity culture
spectacle pilgrimage map theory narrative theory diaspora and displacement and discuss
writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway Theodore Roosevelt Jean Baudrillard Alexis de
Tocqueville Simone de Beauvoir V. S. Naipaul Evelyn Waugh John McPhee George Orwell
Graham Greene Walter Benjamin Constance Fredericka Gordon Cumming Willa Cather Elizabeth
Bowen Kurt Vonnegut Dorothy Richardson Jonathan Raban Paul Theroux Bruce Chatwin and
Doris Lessing.
