Bathos: the literary appeal of absurdly ordinary travel

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the first half of the twentieth century, and most frequently during the Interwar period, many British writers wrote eulogies to the lost art of travel, seemingly appealing to pathos by depicting the demise of authentic travel as the possibility of finding unmapped territories seemed to have dwindled away. Yet, while fatalism abounded, travel writing did not only endure but prospered, and the genre paradoxically found a so-called renaissance. Comparing different travel writers of the period (Peter Fleming, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and George Orwell), this article discusses the appeal of bathos at that period of time, when travel writing became increasingly imbued with anti-climax, disillusionment and negativity. What emerged was a new type of exceptionality, as inescapable ordinariness pushed the boundaries of absurdity, and the experience of boredom abroad seemed a new form of initiation.