Unravelling Civilisation

The Editor: Hagen Schulz-Forberg is associate fellow at the Humboldt University Berlin and research fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. He is a graduate of St. Antony's College, Oxford, and the EUI and has published articles in English, German, and Italian.

This volume is a collection of contributions about the history and practice of travel and travel writing from a variety of academic disciplines including anthropology, history, linguistics and literary criticism. It brings together scholars from over ten different countries and reflects on what travel is and how travel writings function. It traces the history of travel and travel writing and the notion or idea of a European civilisation that permeates performances and perceptions. The notion of Europe appears as a set of quality standards as well as guidelines for experiences against which civilisations are measured. This set of standards and guidelines, however, is far from stable. It is a floating foundation carrying different versions of Europe throughout time.
The authors tackle the problem from different angles: travels from Europe across the seven oceans transported the idea of European civilisation just as travels to Europe or within Europe. The volume explores the different meanings attached to the term 'Europe' and 'civilisation' throughout history and shows how different political or cultural contexts affect the notion of what Europe is or should be.

Contents: Hagen Schulz-Forberg: Introduction. European Travel and Travel Writing. Cultural Practice and the Idea of Europe - James M. Buzard: What Isn't Travel? - Lorenza Mondana: Seeing as a Condition of Saying. On the Discursive Construction of Knowledge in Travel Accounts - Plinio Freire Gomes: Blank Variations. Travel Literature, Mapmaking and the Experience of the Unknown in the New World - Babak Rahimi: From Assorted to Assimilated Ethnography. Transformation of Ethnographic Authority from Michel Membre to John Chardin, 1542-1677 - Larry Wolff: British Travellers and Russian Orthodoxy in the Age of Enlightenment. The Religious Features of Philosophic Geography - Natalia Morazova: The Uniate Church as Seen by European Travellers in the Late Eighteenth Century - Bernhard Struck: Terra Incognita, European Civilisation and Colonised Land. Poland in Mid-eighteenth Century to Mid-nineteenth Century German Travel Accounts - Hans-Erich Bödeker: German Travellers to Italy in the Eighteenth Century. Motives, Intentions, Experiences - Andrei Zorin: Eden in Taurus. Catherine II's Journey to Crimea in 1787 - Political and Cultural Intentions - Søren Dalsgaard: Discovery, Civilisation, and the Projection of European Culture Abroad. Sea Captains' Expedition Accounts, 1817 to 1847 - Hagen Schulz-Forberg: Framing the Senses. Inter-mediality and Inter-sensuality in French and German Urban Travel Writing on London, 1851-1939 - Rudy Koshar: On the Road in Germany between the World Wars - Agneta Edman: Flirting with Modernity / Flirting as Modernity. Gender and the Ideology of the Gaze in Swedish Travel Accounts, 1949-1964 - Tim Youngs: «A Personal Journey on a Historic Route». Gary Younge's No Place Like Home.