ABSTRACT
Travel has always fascinated humans. This fascination has found expression in storytelling and later in writing of all kinds. Travel writing in the western world can perhaps be said to have come into its own from the medieval period. The medieval world was one that was circumscribed in many ways, physical and mental, and the one who transcended these restraints was someone to be regarded with awe. The travelling minstrel, the troubadour who sang of love and war, or the family bard, all were people who had a certain cachet, as having seen the world. More importantly, what they wrote (or sang) was regarded as the final word: at least until the next, more authoritative, word came along. These subsequent works were based on the earlier, which had laid down the fundamentals of the familiar. This familiar could be modified, but the essential character of ‘difference’ was always maintained. A traveller’s tale could also in a sense be a re-affirmation of certain stereotypes, which, in the time of original composition, served perhaps to differentiate, and then became a kind of shorthand, where explanation of difference was no longer needed, for the stereotype was firmly established.
