Comparing and knowing the world: European world travel narratives from the eighteenth to the twentieth century

The project is addressing practices of comparing in non-fictional and fictional European world travel narratives from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. World travel can be seen as a medium in which practices of comparing – ranging from comparative sciences around 1800 to fictitious accounts of world travel in avant-garde literature – produce and negotiate extensive knowledge about the world as a whole. Their documentary, narrative, and aesthetic representations aim to provide frames of cultural orientation while simultaneously exposing the disturbing dynamics of an ever-changing modern world.