Bevis examines a wide range of English, European, and North American texts, literary works as well as religious, scientific, and travel writing. He surveys the literature on mountain climbing, sea voyages, desert travel, and polar exploration, and its metaphorical uses in poetry and fiction. Relying on Addison's term "the Great" rather than "the sublime," he shows how works such as Darwin's journals, Lyell's studies in geology, and de Saussure's books on the Alps helped form an outlook on nature that also found frequent literary expression. A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary work in the...

This is a story of two young men, fresh from school, as they travel in search of knowledge about the world and themselves. Trying to reach Africa on motor scooters, they nearly circle the Mediterranean. The impulses and questions they have are archetypal: similar tales can be told by and of many others who have undertaken their own quests at the turning point between formal education and the decisions that will shape the rest of their lives.