Travels with Masterpieces. Reception of Literary Works in Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing

Reading and travelling were two of the very important human experiences in the first half of the nineteenth century. The connection is very close because literature serves as a source of knowledge about how each traveller should behave and emotionally react to the surrounding world and how they should respond to the adventures that may happen while travelling. Nineteenth-century travel accounts are filled with quotations from literary texts of various kinds. This can be observed in travel-writing texts created by well-educated authors and in tourist guides intended for the average tourist. The aim of this article is to analyse selected examples of why and how literary masterpieces were used in nineteenth-century travel writing.