Representations Of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ In Travel Narratives: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and A.W. Kinglake’s Eothen

As travel and travel accounts are as old as history of mankind. With the beginnings of first examples of literary writings, it is hard to separate travelling and writing within each other. Looking at the 18th century travel literature and its tendencies, this paper explores the argument that the narrative of travel allows the writer to imagine and disseminate images of the self. Defoe and Kinglake, through the discourse of the travel narrative, portray idealised images of the “self” in the construction of the central character and that this is based on social ideals of the time. This paper also shows briefly the idea in both works that is important to the representation of “self” is the representation of the home culture. The main question for this essay could be, to what extent that the narrative of travel allows the writer to imagine and disseminate images of the Self