Re: the Grand Tour 1600-1800. What kinds of travel are undertaken in the period and how does writing of the period conceive of the purposes of travel - Essay Example

Although travel was always associated with visiting some other places this term comprised a number of variations and meanings: the purposes and means of travel might vary greatly. Traveling for the benefit of one’s health was a fashionable tendency in the 18th century. Thus, in one of the brightest pieces of the travel literature of that period Celia Fiennes in The Journeys of Celia Fiennes (1697) wrote that her journeys had been undertaken "to regain my health by variety and change of air and exercise” (Fiennes 2).

Also during the mid 18th century the idea of simple scenic pleasure touring began to gain popularity among the English upper class. Exploring the remote areas of the country inaccessible due to harsh traveling conditions was an interesting challenge to the domestic tourist. Later on many commercial ventures started offering package tours to Scotland and other areas. Of these Cook’s tour’s were so highly successful, that at the end of the Napoleonic Wars they started offering tour packages to foreign lands as well.

With its origin in the Grand tours domestic tourism was further promoted by the restrictions on foreign travel by the Napoleonic Wars lasting from 1790 to1815 (Buzzard 38). The idea of traveling for the sake of self-discovery, morale and intellectual development was not new in the 17th century: such travels found their reflection in the so-called ‘travel literature’. One of the earliest pieces of for the sake of travel and writing about it is Petrarch’s (1304–1374) ascent of Mount Ventoux with the author drawing a parallel between climbing the mountain and his moral development as a person (Petrarch 1948).

However, the idea of traveling for the sake of learning and education – the key idea underlying the Grand Tour – was a relatively new one even in the 18th century