‘Truly a person progresses by travelling and interacting with different peoples’: Travelogues and Life Writing of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

In his magisterial study Postcolonial Life-Writing, Bart Moore-Gilbert outlines what he usefully calls the ‘inter-generic traffic’ between post-colonial life writing and three other genres: fiction, history and travel writing (2009: 89). He points out that ‘autobiography has always proved difficult to classify in anything approaching watertight theoretical terms’ (2009: 69). He follows Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan (2000: 12) in identifying areas of overlap between travelogues and autobiographies. Both are written in the first person and their impetus is often a quest for self-understanding (Moore-Gilbert, 2009: 83). However, Moore-Gilbert highlights two important distinctions that separate travel from life writing. Firstly, travel writing explores ‘the Self’s’ development away from home, as compared with life writing’s interest in the subject both at home and away. Secondly, the travel text is less concerned with self-reflection than life writing is, since this might slow down its crucial journey narrative (Moore-Gilbert, 2009: 83).

Atiya Fyzee, qtd. in Lambert-Hurley and Sharma (2010: 143–4).