This is a past event
This talk is presented as part of the current exhibition at the Sir Duncan Rice Library, Wanderlust: Travel Journals and Explorers' Notes.The exhibition features vivid writing contained in some of the travel journals and explorers' notebooks held with the University's Special Collections.
Wanderlust is a German concept, describing a yearning for distant places; an irrepressible compulsion to discover the unknown. In this talk, Dr. Simon Ward explores travel writing in German Culture from the 18th century to the 1930s.
This richly-illustrated talk will investigate the motivations behind Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s journey to Italy in 1786, which he undertook to escape from his administrative duties at the Weimar Court. It will consider how the traveller relates to the foreign environment, and in particular how the German views the Italian population and the cultural heritage on display there. It will also consider the fact that Goethe published his account of the journey some thirty years later, and thus reflect on the relationship between the immediacy of journal entries and a retrospective account in the construction of the author’s persona.
- Speaker
- Dr Simon Ward, Department of Film & Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen
- Hosted by
- Special Collections Centre
- Venue
- Special Collections Centre Seminar Room, The Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen, Bedford Road, Aberdeen, AB24 3AA
- Contact
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Free entry, booking advised.
scc.events@abdn.ac.uk or 01224 273049