Introduction: travel writing and the travellee

Abstract

First coined by Mary Louise Pratt in 1992, the concept of the “travellee” has received a growing amount of interest in research on travel writing. Exploring the methodological possibilities opened up by the perspective of the travellee, the six articles in this special issue aim both to sharpen the edges of this concept and to test it as a key which may open doors into new disciplinary directions, including geography, political history, anthropology, and translation studies. As the contributions confirm, the encounter between self and other which defines travel writing is certainly a more multifaceted phenomenon than simply an instance where a travelling self acknowledges the presence of “locals”. Indeed, attention to the agency and multiple roles of travellees helps to elucidate not only the cultural significance of travel writing but also its temporal dimension.