ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how nature writing helped shape ideas of nature in the West, and explores the ecological perspectives that inform the so-called ‘new nature writing’ of Robert Macfarlane and others. It explains some of the most commonly used literary forms and rhetorical modes, and also explores their possibilities and limitations. The book presents the forms that include the epistolary, the diary, the guidebook and tourist brochure, narrative, and the lecture. It describes the performative elements of the lectures, which were often delivered with theatrical flair and supported by visual aids such as panoramas and coloured slides. The book focuses on charity and gap-year tourism, and also examines the ethics and power relations involved in seeing. It discusses the different ways maps are deployed in travel texts, perhaps most consistently in guidebooks and in accounts of exploration.
