Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-24hb2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T08:47:58.498Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

44 - Illustration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2019

Kathryn Walchester
Affiliation:
Liverpool John Moores University.
Get access

Summary

An illustration is an example, image or photograph which accompanies text or indeed a piece of text which itself illustrates an idea. Its etymology, from the Latin illustrationem, indicates the action or purpose of an illustration, that is, to ‘enlighten’ or ‘to light up’ a text. Illustrations feature in travel texts from the early-modern period, often in the shape of maps or depictions of landscape. More recently illustrations have provided alternative modes of understanding travel and the identity of its participants.

Critical attention towards illustration in travel writing has come from a variety of disciplines, including art history, geography and literary criticism. Scholars approaching this field have drawn on cultural theory which addresses both visualities and textual production, such as the work of Barthes, Derrida and Genette. Derek Gregory's (2003, 224) term of a ‘scopic regime’ has been a useful concept for travel writing scholars to consider the ‘structuring effect’ of images.

Since the 1980s, cultural geographers have considered the role of the image in travel texts as indicative of ways of constituting power. The work of Cosgrove, Rose and Daniels explores the role of representation in making geographical knowledge and imagination. Cosgrove (2008, 3) notes how ‘graphic and pictorial images play active and creative roles that take the significance of representation beyond mere transcription of spatial and environmental facts’. More recent engagements with images in travel writing have noted their ability to disrupt and challenge dominant discourses. In her work on Nicolas Bouvier, Margaret Topping (2009, 332) draws on Barthesian notions of an ‘interlacing’ between text and image which produces ‘a recognition of polyphony and diversity […] fleetingly captured […] but also forever exceeding […] the interaesthetic spaces of negotiation between written word and photographic images’. Andrew Thacker likewise notes the interaction between text and image in his discussion of the illustrations of maps in Graham Greene's travel writing. He draws on Derrida's proposals noting that a map ‘such as the one at the start of Greene's book […] both adds to the text and substitutes [emphases in the original] for the written text’ (Thacker in Burdett and Duncan 2002, 11; Derrida 1976, 144–45).

Type
Chapter
Information
Keywords for Travel Writing Studies
A Critical Glossary
, pp. 127 - 129
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×