Designed to offer a state-of-the-art introduction to established and emerging patterns of research, The Ashgate Research Companion to Travel Writing takes an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship and to travel texts themselves. The volume adopts a thematic approach, with each contributor considering a specific aspect of travel writing - a recurrent motif, an organizing principle, or a literary form. All of the essays include a discussion of representative travel texts, to ensure that the volume as a whole represents a broad historical and geographical range of travel writing. Together,...