Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book outlines the use of the spoken word and orality in the 1783 account of England published by Karl Philipp Moritz. It explores how direct speech contributed to the creation of a sense of 'affective realism', which invited the reader's emotional involvement in the scenes described. The chapter focuses on the representational strategies used by women writers and travellers to England, notably Sophie von La Roche. It also focuses on the work of Carl Gottlieb Horstig, whose account of travel to England appeared in 1806. The chapter discusses the account by Johanna Schopenhauer of her travels to England and Scotland, analyses the complex relationship between pictorial and textual landscape description. It examines her use of the tableau vivant, the attitude, and other devices borrowed from the theatre to construct in the reader's mind a three-dimensional scene.