After considering in a more general way the relationships between autobiographical writing, travel writing and ethnographic writing, the paper considers how the ancient, unlike the modern, regard travel as a means of acquiring information rather than as an educational experience and a value in itself (and as such to be fixed in writing). Focusing on three herodotean logoi dedicated to remote lands that are known through intermediaries (India, Ethiopia and Arabia), it then analyzes the narrative mechanisms through which a historical and individual experience and an originally polyphonic reality are transposed into the impersonal and timeless writing and the monological reality typical of ethnographic discourse.
Travel Writing, Ethnographical Writing, and the Representation of the Edges of the World in Herodotus
DORATI, MARCO MASSIMO
2011
Abstract
After considering in a more general way the relationships between autobiographical writing, travel writing and ethnographic writing, the paper considers how the ancient, unlike the modern, regard travel as a means of acquiring information rather than as an educational experience and a value in itself (and as such to be fixed in writing). Focusing on three herodotean logoi dedicated to remote lands that are known through intermediaries (India, Ethiopia and Arabia), it then analyzes the narrative mechanisms through which a historical and individual experience and an originally polyphonic reality are transposed into the impersonal and timeless writing and the monological reality typical of ethnographic discourse.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
