Some Observations on the Role of Prefaces in Nineteenth-Century Short French Travel Narratives

Abstract

This article is based on the analysis of the prefaces of a set of nineteenth-century French travel writing. These first pages fulfill a double function: an informative function regarding the text itself, and a persuasive one, designed to convince the reader. In this essay we will study the different stylistic resources used by travelers to achieve this purpose, which will allow us to identify, for example, readers expectations or the evolution of the genre