The Poetics of the Travel book from the middle ages to the 21st century

Abstract

This essay reproduces the plenary conference given at the Eleventh International Conference of Medieval Spanish Literature at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. The travel narrative of the Middle Ages is put in relation with its contemporary version in the Hispanic world. After providing an overview, a selection of features, which are maintained without great variation until the 20th and the 21st century (double transitoriness, presence of chance, rhetorical devices, variations of the marvelous, etc.) are presented. The second part discusses the relation with the scientific disciplines, the travel story as genre, the displacement, photographic illustration and the complexity of editing, amongst other things. The essay concludes with a brief reflection on the valuation of the travel fiction as a literary genre.