Voyages and Vision in Travel Literature: The Quest Motif

Abstract

This paper takes a look at the places travelled (voyages) and the perspectives discovered (visions) along the journeys taken by the researcher, both outward (physical) and inward (psychological). Travel is viewed as part of the process of self-actualization, to define and assert existential identity as in the trope: I travel. Therefore, I am. Thus, travelling was utilized in this study. Besides, the five senses are used such as the look, smell, sound, and taste in order to write vividly the travel literature. Finding is, it enabled the researcher to discover what American writer Edith Wharton recognized in the narrative version of herself — “a woman who had undertaken a spiritual quest and had found her most authentic self”.