Books, prints, and travel: Reading in the gaps of the orientalist archive

Abstract

From about 1780 a thriving publishing industry for travel accounts developed in France, but its rich visual component has not been closely analysed. Taking Auguste de Forbin's Voyage dans le Levant and Marie-Gabriel de Choiseul-Gouffier's Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce as paradigmatic examples, I reconsider illustrated travel books in light of new theories of reading generated by historians of the book. The multifarious nature of these books - juggling word and image, and coordinating the work of a large number of writers, researchers, artists and printmakers - provides a radically alternative model for interpreting travel representation in the age of expansion. © Association of Art Historians 2008.