🌎 June Theme: The Traveller’s Notebook

As the sun reaches its zenith and the desire to wander grows, our intellectual journey takes us beyond the library walls.

The Renaissance was also an era of the Great Voyages of Discovery. Figures like Amerigo Vespucci and Francis Drake didn't just map coastlines; they recorded the ‘other’—the customs, languages, and myths of civilisations previously unknown to the European eye. They returned not just with gold, but with Travelogues: diaries that transformed the world into a text to be read, analysed, and wondered at.

Prompt: Select a work that is profoundly transportive, focusing on the human experience within a distinct, rich cultural setting; a story where the landscape, history, and mythology are as much a character as the people themselves.

This month, I am immersing myself in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). It has been on my shelf for ages and I have been told that it is the ultimate traveller’s notebook of the imagination. Through the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo, García Márquez invites us to experience the history, political trauma, and lush, unexplainable mythology of Colombia. It is a masterclass in Magical Realism, a genre that treats the impossible as a matter-of-fact part of the cultural landscape.

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🖋️ Critical Inquiries: Mapping the Human Condition

As you settle into your chosen setting this month, use these four Renaissance-inspired inquiries to unpack the relationship between the traveler (the reader) and the place:

The Mappa Mundi of the Self

Renaissance cartographers created mappa mundi which were maps that depicted not just physical geography, but theological and moral truths. How does the setting of your book act as a map of the protagonist’s soul? Does the environment reflect their internal growth, or does it eventually swallow them whole?

The Exotic vs. The Essential

Travelogues often fell into the trap of exoticising the other. How does your author ground their setting? Do they capture the essentials of daily life; food, the labor, the gossip, the weather, or do they treat the culture as a mere backdrop for the plot?

Mythology as History

Renaissance humanists rediscovered the myths of the ancients to understand their own history. In your text, how is the mythology of the place interwoven with its reality?

The Pilgrimage

In the Renaissance, Pilgrimage was a journey taken for enlightenment. Is your protagonist a tourist, an exile, or a pilgrim? How does their movement through this specific culture change their fundamental map of the world?

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Our Live Lectures

A quick reminder that our May Live Lecture/Discussion will be held here on Saturday 13 June at 6pm GMT.

Recordings will be made available to paid subscribers