The theme of the journey is very recurrent in the English literature: many poets and writers have told stories of big voyages, trips around the world and wonderful adventures.
Not only a “physical journey”: various authors tell us about another way of travelling. The concept of an inner journey is similar to the traditional view of a journey in that it is also a movement or growth to maturity in an individual because of challenging and inspiring experiences.
Starting from this concept, throughout their stories, many writers developed an interesting parallelism between these two types of journey; a physical movement corresponds to an inner changing, that is, in the majority of the cases, related with the personality of the character.
The fall of the Rebel Angel.
IN THE REINASSANCE AND IN THE PURITAN AGE
One of the first authors narrating about journeys is probably John Donne: in one of his more famous poem, called “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, he tells about a spiritual journey, created by the strong love relationship between his wife and him, represented by the methaporical figure of the compass: the wife is the centre of this tool, and Donne gravitates around her forever, because the love between them connects their souls, allowing them to melt into an only thing.<<Our two souls therefore, which are one>>.
It doesn’t matter how far from her Donne gravitates, because their “spiritual love” is stronger than everything else, and it permits them to stay together even if they are far from each other (in that period Donne was involved in diplomatic mission in France; so, a real journey).
Another author talking about a spiritual, religious journey is doubtlessly John Milton: contemporarly to Donne, the English author, in his famous “Paradise Lost” narrates of the fall of Satan “The Rebel Angel”, hurled down from heaven with the tenth order of angels, that revolted with him against God. Here, the dynamic movement is assimilable to a purifying journey, that Satan has to complete to achieve his object to attack God’s creation, Man, to finally complete his revenge against his Father. To make this, he must learn to control himself, completing an “inner journey” to re-discover his personality and to be judged fit to found an empire.
The dynamism of the work is higlihted by the contraposition between Heaven and Hell, that builds a vertical structure and, consequently, a vertical movement that starts from the “Infernal World” and ends in the “Oblivious Pool”;<< Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light>>.In this way, the journey of Satan appears clearer, more material, and it becomes a real, difficult path that is coincident with the catharsis of Lucifer.
IN THE RESTORATION AND IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE
The theme of the journey is also present in the period of the Restoration and the Augustan Age; this theme is delt with by different authors, but the most important are Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. Both tell us of a journey within their works; Daniel Defoe’ work was Robinson Crusoe, while Jonathan Swift’ work was Gulliver’s Travels.
The first novel is about the main character, Robinson, who decides to travel around the world and make his fortune by visiting different countries and getting slaves for his plantation; during a journey to Africa he has an accident and he shipwrecks on the island where he will remain for 28 years. This novel can be read as a story that is about a man going on a spiritual travel; Robinson Crusoe is full of religious references to God. There is a conflict between good and evil and Robinson prays to God to be freed from sin rather than to be rescued from the island and what Defoe explores, is the conflict between economic motivation and spiritual salvation.
Jonathan Swift’s work is divided into four books. Gulliver's Travels is the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon who takes to the seas. He completes many voyages without incident, but his final four journeys take him to some of the strangest lands on the planet, where he discovers the virtues and flaws in his own culture by comparing it with others. Then there are four travels, and they are the means by which Gulliver develops his awareness of the limitations of British society.
An illustration depicting Gulliver.
The Wreck Buoy by J.M.W Turner
IN THE ROMANTIC AGE
The englightened theoretician Rousseau influenced the cult of the exotic, that is, the veneration of what is far away both in space and in time. Not only did the Romantic poets welcome the picturesque in scenery, but also the remote and the unfamiliar in custom and social outlook, as we can see in ‘ The Tyger’ of William Blake.
The theme of the journey is also present in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
In fact, the creature escapes after its creation and all this can be defined as an escape due to the social prejudices that characterize the creature.
In her best-known novel, Mary Shelley employs extreme landscapes to reflect the nature of her characters and their situations.
Frankenstein, written when its author was only 19 and first published in 1818, is from its outset dependent upon notions of travel and place. In the introductory letters of Robert Walton and the first chapter of Victor Frankenstein's narrative, readers are provided with a stunning array of physical landscapes: they are transported on a journey from London to St Petersburg; to Archangel on the White Sea and the ice floes of the Arctic Ocean; then south to Geneva and Lucerne in Switzerland, Milan and the Italian Lakes, Germany and France. It is quickly established that both travel and location are to be central in the unfolding of this tale.
Not only do these geographical descriptions provide us with a panoramic view of early nineteenth-century Europe and beyond, they also link closely to the novel's greater concerns. The powerful questions of ethics and the permissible boundaries of scientific research, the tormented psychology of Victor Frankenstein and the tortured existence of the monster he creates - considerations which sit at the heart of this great novel - are all intimately bound up in the use Shelley makes of wide-ranging choices of location and the notion of journey and travel.
As a man of science and an explorer, Walton embodies for us this connection between travel, location and the great themes of the novel. He closely mirrors the character of Frankenstein, a connection Shelley is quick to establish. Walton, in want of a friend to share his interests, identifies in Frankenstein 'a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart'.
Likewise, Frankenstein observes an affinity. He sees in Walton something of his own fatal propensity: the inability to place responsible bounds on the quest for knowledge. Walton's incapacity 'to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation' is alarmingly similar to Frankenstein's unwillingness to heed the warnings of both his friend Clerval and the woman he loves, Elizabeth, to temper his scientific zeal. His determination to acquire knowledge, whatever the cost and wherever it may lead, has already set him on the same fateful quest.
A quick link to the biography of the authors treated in this article:
