Eco-Travel

Travel writing has defined the natural world as we have come to know it, can it now save it?

This Element explores human travel encounters with the environment over the centuries and asks, what is the future for travel writing in the age of the Anthropocene?Human encounters with the natural world are inseparable from the history of travel. Nature, as fearsome obstacle, a wonder to behold or a source of therapeutic refuge, is bound up with the story of human mobility. Stories of this mobility give readers a sense of the diversity of the natural world, how they might interpret and respond to it and how human preoccupations are a help or a hindrance in maintaining bio-cultural diversity. Travel writing has constantly shaped how humans view the environment from foreign adventures to flight-shaming. If much of modern travel writing has been based on ready access to environmentally damaging forms of transport how do travel writers deal with a practice that is destroying the world they claim to cherish? This Element explores human travel encounters with the environment over the centuries and asks, what is the future for travel writing in the age of the Anthropocene?