Text and Topos: British Travellers to Real‐and‐Imagined Classical Sites, c. 1560–1820.
Early‐modern British travellers to the Mediterranean often understood their journeys through the lens of classical texts and culture. Historians sometimes explain this as an imaginative phenomenon: travellers' preconceptions shaped by classical knowledge guided their subsequent comprehension and act...
| Publicado en: | History Vol. 110; no. 393; pp. 588 - 606 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Wiley-Blackwell
Dec2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=190770333&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 190770333 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00182648 HSY jtl: History issn: 00182648 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Dec2025 vid: 110 iid: 393 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 190770333 10.1111/1468-229X.70040 ppf: 588 ppct: 18 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 265KB tig: atl: Text and Topos: British Travellers to Real‐and‐Imagined Classical Sites, c. 1560–1820. aug: au: STOCK, PAUL affil: London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, UK su: Travelers Historic sites Voyages & travels Early modern history Geography Cultural relations Actor-network theory sug: subj: Travelers Historic sites Voyages & travels Early modern history Geography Cultural relations Actor-network theory ab: Early‐modern British travellers to the Mediterranean often understood their journeys through the lens of classical texts and culture. Historians sometimes explain this as an imaginative phenomenon: travellers' preconceptions shaped by classical knowledge guided their subsequent comprehension and activity. This article instead argues that travellers' experiences of classical sites incorporated both physical and imaginative aspects, usefully expressed by two meanings of the Greek word topos, which can mean both 'place' and 'convention'. Travellers were attentive to the empirical details of the sites they physically encountered, but they also saw those locations in terms of cultural discourses. In this way, their engagement with classical sites blends the material and the discursive to create 'real‐and‐imagined' spaces. The article next explores the effects of materiality on travellers' experiences. Using insights from actor‐network theory, it shows how objects and other non‐human agents contributed to the formation of real‐and‐imagined spaces, and that travellers at classical sites were not always in full control of their experiences. This perspective – alive to the material and the representational, and aware of multiple agents interacting at a site – proposes a less anthropocentric understanding of travel. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of History is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: History holder: Wiley-Blackwell dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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