ABSTRACT
Between the 1930s and the 1950s a series of books on Tibet written by Italian explorers were translated into English. This chapter analyzes the way in which the Italian texts present the 'personae' of the authors and their respective relationship with national, international and imperial discourses of the period. May's observations about the conventional predominance of the past tense in English language narrative can be applied to travel writing as well as to the novel, and have important consequences for the translation of Italian travelogues. Travel and travel writing are exceptional locations for the formation of cultural and intercultural images: individual and group identity, the construction of self and other, gender and its representations, time and space relations are all crucial elements of travel writing and are increasingly the object of critical analysis. Italian travel writing is a largely invisible and uncodified genre, which has so far escaped extensive critical attention.
