Children’s travel. Dangers, myths and spectacle

Abstract

In its extraordinary development, travel writings studies have widened their scope to consider many different categories of travelers. However, enough attention has not been paid to numerous texts whose main characters are children who, owing to many reasons, must leave their homes. Yet some of these narratives are in the center of the literary canon or have at least provided remarkable archetypes to the history of culture. This paper traces several examples where the «heroes» are very young travelers, and analyzes the narrative models persisting throughout the centuries, the transformations that have adapted them to different historical coordinates and the irruption of new motifs and discoursive practices in the transition from Modernity to Postmodernity. In the approach to every cultural context —from the Middle Ages to our society of spectacle— I have taken into account the predominant conception of childhood and its relation with aspects that go beyond this period of life and function as a mirror to certain issues of the adult world.