Chateaubriands Travels In America

Chateaubriand's Travels in America, presented here in its first modern translation, was a reflection of the attitudes of his epoch toward the New World. And at the same time, because of his enormous literary reputation, it has continued to be a major source of European impressions about America. The America portrayed by Chateaubriand was much more a product of his reading and his imagination than of his actual visit. (His supposed itinerary included a trip up the Hudson to Albany, a visit to Niagara Falls via the Mohawk Trail, a trip down the Mississippi to the Natchez country, and even a visit to the Carolinas and the southern tip of Florida). Though the Frenchman of the nineteenth century could have obtained a much truer picture of America in any number of realistic works, he still chose the poetic evocation of Chateaubriand because he shared the same temperament, the same prejudices, and the same particular view of the world.

Voyage en Italie - François-René de Chateaubriand. A translation into English by A. S. Kline. Published with selected illustrations. Chateaubriand's Voyage en Italie, describes his Italian travels in the years 1803-4, during the first of his visits to the country. From France he crossed the Alps to Rome and its environs, from which he subsequently travelled to Naples, where Vesuvius, Baiae, and Pompeii figured amongst the sights he visited. His knowledge of the Classical world informs his wanderings among its ruins, and he enjoys the poetry of the picturesque while reflecting on the grandeur of the past. Rome, for him, represents a meeting of the Classical and Christian worlds, magnificent but in many ways a hollow tribute to human vanity, a theme he will revisit in his later travels to Greece, the Levant and the Holy Land. Naples represents a more picturesque and vibrant Italy. Articulating both cultural quest and voyage for pleasure, Chateaubriand writes of his journey as a 'tourist' rather than a scholar or adventurer, penning the work in the form of letters, derived from his travel notes and designed for his interested friends. Here he mingles personal memories with aesthetic and historical perceptions, against the background in which he is most at home, the European heritage, the works of the great poets, landscape and ruins, allowing him to muse freely on transience, the human voyage, and on beauty, found or created. This and other texts available from Poetry in Translation (www.poetryintranslation.com).

Originally published in 1828, Fran√ßois Ren√(c) de Chateaubriand's 2-volume Travels in America and Italy is an important literary travel narrative written by a leading (some would say founding) figure of French Romanticism. Chateaubriand traveled to America in 1791 to escape the volatile atmosphere of Revolutionary France. While some doubt has been raised as to whether he actually traveled to all the areas he claimed, (discrepancies in his descriptions of flora and fauna, lead scholars to believe that Chateaubriand did not travel to the Mississippi River, Florida, Alabama, or to Louisiana, as implied by his writing) Chateaubriand's lush descriptions of nature, particularly that of the sparsely populated landscape of the American South, place this work at the forefront of the French Romantic tradition, strongly impacting leading writers and thinkers of the time. Moral and intellectual concerns are explored throughout the work, for example in the Preface that contains his theories of geographical science and the history of travel. The work is also known for its exploration of the customs, manners, and languages of the Native American tribes Chateaubriand encountered. vol. 1 of 2

Containing more than 600 entries, this valuable resource presents all aspects of travel writing. There are entries on places and routes (Afghanistan, Black Sea, Egypt, Gobi Desert, Hawaii, Himalayas, Italy, Northwest Passage, Samarkand, Silk Route, Timbuktu), writers (Isabella Bird, Ibn Battuta, Bruce Chatwin, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Kingsley, Walter Ralegh, Wilfrid Thesiger), methods of transport and types of journey (balloon, camel, grand tour, hunting and big game expeditions, pilgrimage, space travel and exploration), genres (buccaneer narratives, guidebooks, New World chronicles, postcards), companies and societies (East India Company, Royal Geographical Society, Society of Dilettanti), and issues and themes (censorship, exile, orientalism, and tourism). For a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia website.