Page - 36 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020
Image of the Page - 36 -
Text of the Page - 36 -
36 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel)
Sandra Vlasta | Enlightening report versus enlightened traveller
von jedermann, der ihm begegnet, angestaunt, bedauert, in Verdacht gehalten und geflohen
wird […]’ (Moritz 2000: 82) [A traveller on foot in this country seems to be considered as a
sort of wild man or out-of-the way being, who is stared at, pitied, suspected, and shunned by
everybody that meets him (Moritz 1795: Chapter IX, no page number)]. Consequently, Moritz
sometimes has trouble finding accommodation and even has to leave certain villages because
he is not welcome. He is given an even worse reception when he pauses in the shade at the side
of the road to read Milton’s Paradise Lost:
[d]ie Vorbeireitenden und Fahrenden [gafften mich] immer mit einer solchen Verwunderung [an
und machten] […] solche bedeutenden Mienen […], als ob sie mich für einen Verrückten hielten,
so sonderbar mußte es ihnen vorkommen, einen Menschen an der öffentlichen Landstraße sitzen,
und in einem Buche lesen zu sehen’ (Moritz 2000: 83) [those who rode or drove past me, stared at
me with astonishment, and made many significant gestures as if they thought my head deranged;
so singular must it needs have appeared to them to see a man sitting along the side of a public road
and reading. (Moritz 1795: Chapter IX, no page number)]
Still, Moritz continues to read and mentions it casually several times in his travelogue (see
Moritz 2000: 93, 104, 132; at times he even reads while walking; see Moritz 2000: 155).
In this way, Moritz creates an image of himself/the traveller as a walker and reader — ano-
ther idiosyncrasy of his travelogue. The act of reading is at times even performed: Moritz cites
what he reads so that the reader can experience the text as well (see the passage that recalls his
experience of the cave discussed above, Moritz 2000: 132, and the passage referred to in footnote
19, Moritz 2000: 155). In this way, the reader is invited to understand and share the experience
that is so important to him. It is an invitation to read Milton’s text, but also simply to be a rea-
der, a traveller, a walker, and thus an enlightened subject. This intertextual strategy is part of
the rhetoric of sensibility and sympathetic engagement of the reader that Alison Martin (2003,
2008a) detects in Moritz’s text. The process of walking, reading, and thinking eventually beco-
mes so important to Moritz that he ascribes it to his alter ego, Anton Reiser, in the eponymous
novel. It is an expression of illuminated emancipation and becomes emblematic of the trave-
logue, an image that characterizes the text.
IV Conclusion
Both Forster (and his father) and Moritz were aware of the power of images as paratextual ele-
ments and of their influence on the reader. From the outset, they saw them as integral elements
of their travelogues that were either produced on the journey (such as Forster’s sketches) or for
a written account (such as Chodowiecki and Meil’s images in Moritz’s travelogue). Thus, the
images in the texts tell us a great deal about the genesis of the volumes in question.
Both authors used them to underscore particular aspects of their texts, unique features that set
them apart from the mass of travelogues of the time. In Georg Forster’s case, the images stress the
scientific character of the journey. In Moritz’s case, the cover image of the first edition prepares the
reader for a different experience of England and emphasizes the sublime, picturesque, and uncanny
experience of the Peak Cavern, which is closely linked to Moritz’s reading of Milton’s Paradise Lost.
What is more, together with the images of the walker and reader that he creates with words, it forms
the ‘psychological’ aspect of his journey, a theme that he would explore in greater detail in later works.
>mcs_lab>
Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020
The Journal
- Title
- >mcs_lab>
- Subtitle
- Mobile Culture Studies
- Volume
- 2/2020
- Editor
- Karl Franzens University Graz
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- German, English
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 270
- Categories
- Zeitschriften Mobile Culture Studies The Journal