Raymond Williams did not include ‘body’ as a keyword in either of the editions of his Keywords, although the corporeal is inevitably implicit across a range of the terms that he does discuss, including ‘human’, ‘man’ and ‘sex’. The concept is selected, however, for New Keywords in 2005, where an essay by Maureen McNeil underlines its importance in philosophical discussions (primarily as part of the mind-body split), as well as its key role in modern and contemporary debate (especially in the area of body politics).

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the body as the ‘complete physical form of a person or animal; the assemblage of parts, organs and tissues that constitutes the whole material organism’, and it is this physicality – in contrast to, for example, any emphasis on the soul – that is central to the term's status as a keyword in the study of travel writing. Other meanings of body – relating, for instance, to the ‘body’ of the text as opposed to paratextual elements such as maps and illustrations – are also relevant, and the functioning of the (dead) ‘body’ as a synonym of ‘corpse’ (from the French equivalent corps) can also be important in texts associated with particular forms of ‘extreme’ travel (Huggan 2009) or ‘dark tourism’.

Travel writing operates, however, as one of the most (if not the most) corporeal of literary genres (Bouvier 2000), and with several rare exceptions, the travelogue invariably describes – in its most pared back definition – the passage of the human body through place and space, with varying degrees of resistance and with various forms of assistance, mechanical or otherwise. It is consequently surprising that criticism of the form pays relatively sparse attention to analyses of the travelogue as a representation of the body in motion. The body is not only the vehicle thanks to which travel traditionally occurs (often as a result of self-propulsion, as with walking and cycling), and via which it is variously experienced and freighted. The limits of the body can also, at moments of exhaustion and dysfunction, serve as an impediment to the progress of the journey. Any celebration of physicality (or definition of travel in relation to figures of youth and health) is accordingly tempered with an awareness of the potential fallibility (or at least unpredictability) of the travelling body.