Lessons of Travel in Eighteenth-Century France: From Grand Tour to School Trips

The book will explore the changing conceptions of travel as educational practice from the late 17th century to the Revolutionary period and slightly beyond: there is no work offering such an overview. The book will also tackle a number of texts entirely or mostly unknown to the academic and wider public. France is well known for a duality in its approach to travels: we find at the same time a continuous fascination for travellers, and an ongoing unease with travel writing. The repeated attempts to create ‘perfect’ travels and travelogues belong both to the international tradition of ‘arts of travel’, and represent a unique, French answer. Planned structure of the volume: Introduction: on travels, arts of travel and on crisis 1. Commercial perspectives: abbé Pluche and Co. 2. Travel on a Moebius strip: Rousseau in the apodemic tradition 3. Last reminiscences of the Grand Tour 4. The end of an era: the Lyon competition and the art of non-travel 5. Inventing school trips to save the Revolution 6. Between travel and mission: travel in the training of diplomats Conclusion: Is there a French tradition in the arts of travel?