ABSTRACT
In the history of western literature a connection between intellectual activity and walking can frequently be discovered. Numerous writers walked to write, thus taking their place in the ancient tradition of so-called peripatetic writers. The word ‘peripatetic’ derives from Greek and refers to the teaching method of Aristotle. To clear his thinking Aristotle lectured while he and his students were walking in circles through the Lyceum. Famous examples of peripatetic writers are Robert Walser (1878–1956), Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). Particularly Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire, 1782) reveal such a connection between observation, reflexion, and imagination that lays the basis of the modern literature of walking.
