Travel Writing in Victorian Periodicals: Media Forms and Cultural Work

该项目是对英国文化研究的一项贡献，调查了1850-1900年期间普通兴趣期刊中旅行的表现，当时英国在旅游业的兴起和期刊市场的迅速扩张中发挥了主导作用。旅游和期刊文化之间的这种联系在很大程度上被忽视了，因为旅游写作研究往往集中在书籍出版物上。该项目旨在展示维多利亚时代的期刊如何根据其媒体逻辑来配置旅行的表现，以及这种特定于媒体的表现如何与文化功能(或文化作品)携手并进。该项目提出，大众兴趣期刊有助于将旅行纳入维多利亚时代的文化，并使其读者熟悉旅行的想法、其话语和实践。在这里，有两个特定于媒体的方面至关重要：第一，一般兴趣期刊通常呈现混合内容，并将旅行与维多利亚时代文化的其他主题联系在一起；第二，期刊面向不同的读者群体。因此，与旅行书籍相比，维多利亚时代对旅行的兴趣可以用更广泛的社会范围和更细粒度的社会分类来探索。该项目确定了定期为因经济和/或社会限制而旅行机会有限的人进行旅行调解的特殊重要性。在其他因素中，这是因为期刊可以用单篇文章来代表旅行--一种适合描述小(廉价和适度)旅行形式的小形式。本项目调查了7种不同受众的期刊语料库，确立了文化期刊研究的方法和概念。它为19世纪旅行文化和旅行写作的研究开辟了一个新的视角，但它也可以作为更近的旅行星座和日常媒体(如电视和今天的社交媒体)的历史衬托。

The project is a contribution to British cultural studies and investigates the representation of travel in general-interest periodicals for the period 1850–1900, when Britain played a leading role in the rise of tourism and the rapid expansion of the periodicals market. This nexus between travel and periodicals culture has been largely ignored because travel writing research has tended to focus on book publications. The project aims to demonstrate how Victorian periodicals configured the representation of travel according to their media logic, and how this media-specific representation went hand in hand with cultural functions (or cultural work). The project proposes that general-interest periodicals helped to inscribe travel into Victorian culture and to familiarise their readers with ideas of travel, its discourses and practices. Two media-specific aspects are of central importance here: firstly, general-interest periodicals typically presented mixed content and enlaced travel with other themes of Victorian culture; secondly, periodicals addressed different segments of the reading audience. The Victorian interest in travel can thus be explored with a wider social range and a more fine-grained social classification than for travel books. The project identifies a special importance of periodicals for mediating travel to people whose opportunities for travel were limited by economic and/or social restraints. Among other factors, this was enabled by the fact that periodicals can represent travel in single articles – a small form suitable for depicting small (cheap and modest) forms of travel. The project investigates a corpus of 7 periodicals for different audiences, with established methods and concepts of cultural periodical studies. It develops a new perspective for the study of nineteenth-century travel culture and travel writing, but it can also serve as a historical foil for more recent constellations of travel and everyday media such as television and today’s social media.