Notes on a Poetics of Travel Writing

Abstract

Since ancient times, travel has been present in different scientific disciplines and the arts. Travel narratives have also adopted the most diverse formats, from chronicle, which aims at objectivity, through logbook, to fictional narrative. This formal diversity points to the documentary-artistic duality inherent to travel writing. The objective reality the traveler explores is tinged with the subjectivity of the observer, who is also the bearer of a preconstructed gaze. Travelling subjects become the vertex of a triangle that connects their reality to that of others, and the journey becomes the bridge that connects both shores. The aim of these brief notes is none other than to review and update some of the basic pillars that support what could be called a poetics of travel writing, a field as complex as it is elusive due to its dynamic and hybrid essence. This article also offers an adequate contextualization of the different contributions that make up this monographic volume on Spanish and German cultures in transit, as well as on travel and its narratives as a contact space.