Imaginary voyage is a narrative genre which presents fictitious locations in the form of a travel narrative, but has no generally agreed-upon definition.
It has been subdivided into fantastic voyages and realistic voyages depending on the prominence of "marvelous or supernatural elements".
[ It can be a ]utopia
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', which describes a fictiona ...
n or satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual arts, visual, literature, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently Nonfiction, non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ...
representation put into a fictional frame of travel
Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical Location (geography), locations. Travel can be done by Pedestrian, foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without Baggage, luggage, a ...
account.[ It has been regarded as a predecessor of ]science fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
.[Fantastic voyage, in: ''Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'', ed. by John Clute, 1993]
Types
Goeffroy Atkinson suggested as a more detailed subdivision of imaginary voyages published up to 1720:[
*''Fantastic'' or ''Marvellous'': characterized by recognizably supernatural elements
*''Extaordinary'': believable travel accounts distinguished by "geographic realism", but outside "familiar European countries"
*''Extra-terrestrial''
*''Satirical'' or ''Allegorical'': clearly recognizable depictions of concepts rather than foreign geographies
*'' Subterranean''
Sources including later developments of the genre added as types:][
*" Time travel stories"
*"Microcosmic romances"
*]Space opera
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes Space warfare in science fiction, space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, i ...
Elements of the imaginary voyage can also appear in the picaresque novel
The picaresque novel ( Spanish: ''picaresca'', from ''pícaro'', for ' rogue' or 'rascal') is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish but appealing hero, usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrup ...
. In Grimmelshausen’s ''Simplicius Simplicissimus
''Simplicius Simplicissimus'' () is a picaresque novel of the lower Baroque style, written in five books by German author Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen published in 1668, with the sequel ''Continuatio'' appearing in 1669. Inspired b ...
'' (1668), for example, the eponymous hero travels to the centre of the earth and is later stranded on a desert island, both of which are hallmarks of the genre.
History
Classical origins
The imaginary voyage is a very archaic narrative technique preceding romance and novel
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...
istic forms. Two known examples from Greek literature are Euhemerus
Euhemerus (; also spelled Euemeros or Evemerus; ''Euhēmeros'', "happy; prosperous"; late fourth century BC) was a Greek mythographer at the court of Cassander, the king of Macedon. Euhemerus' birthplace is disputed, with Messina in Sicily as ...
' ''Sacred History'' and Iambulus’ ''Islands of the Sun''.[David Winston. Iambulus' Islands of the Sun and Hellenistic Literary Utopias]
in: Science Fiction Studies #10 = Volume 3, Part 3 = November 1976 Their utopian islands are apparently modeled from mythological Fortunate Isles
The Fortunate Isles or Isles of the Blessed (, ''makarōn nēsoi'') were semi-legendary islands in the Atlantic Ocean, variously treated as a simple geographical location and as a winterless earthly paradise inhabited by the heroes of Greek myth ...
.
Lucian
Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridi ...
's '' True History'' parodizes the whole genre of imaginary voyage, and in his foreword Lucian cites Iambulus as one of objects of parody. He also foregrounds his work as being a deliberate fabrication: "I will say one thing that is true, and that is that I am a liar". Photius
Photius I of Constantinople (, ''Phōtios''; 815 – 6 February 893), also spelled ''Photius''Fr. Justin Taylor, essay "Canon Law in the Age of the Fathers" (published in Jordan Hite, T.O.R., and Daniel J. Ward, O.S.B., "Readings, Cases, Mate ...
states though in his Bibliotheca that its main object was Antonius Diogenes' ''The Incredible Wonders Beyond Thule'',[ a genre blending of fantastic voyage and Greek romance which popularized ]Pythagorean
Pythagorean, meaning of or pertaining to the ancient Ionian mathematician, philosopher, and music theorist Pythagoras, may refer to:
Philosophy
* Pythagoreanism, the esoteric and metaphysical beliefs purported to have been held by Pythagoras
* Ne ...
teachings.
Development
Exotic travel writing appeared in the form of wonder books in the medieval West in the 13th century, fantastic tales of imaginary voyages presented as real autobiographical accounts. '' The Travels of Sir John Mandeville'' (c. 1357) and the ''Itinerarius'' of Johannes Witte de Hese (c. 1390) are important representatives of this late medieval tendency.
The first to revive this form in the Modern era was Thomas More
Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, theologian, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VII ...
in his ''Utopia'' (1515), to be followed a century later by proliferation of utopian islands: Johannes Valentinus Andreae
Johannes Valentinus Andreae (17 August 1586 – 27 June 1654), a.k.a. Johannes Valentinus Andreä or Johann Valentin Andreae, was a German theologian, who claimed to be the author of an ancient text known as the ''Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Ro ...
's ''Reipublicae Christianopolitanae descriptio'' (1619), Tommaso Campanella
Tommaso Campanella (; 5 September 1568 – 21 May 1639), baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet.
Campanella was prosecuted by the Roman Inquisition for he ...
's '' The City of the Sun'' (1623), Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of nat ...
's ''New Atlantis
''New Atlantis'' is a utopian novel by Sir Francis Bacon, published posthumously in 1626. It appeared unheralded and tucked into the back of a longer work of natural history, ''Sylva Sylvarum'' (forest of materials). In ''New Atlantis'', Bac ...
'' (1627), Jacob Bidermann
Jacob Bidermann (1578 – 20 August 1639) was born in the village of Ehingen, about 30 miles southwest of Ulm. He was a Jesuit priest and professor of theology, but is remembered mostly for his plays.
He had a talent for writing plays that be ...
's ''Utopia'' (1640), Gabriel Daniel's ''Voyage du monde de Descartes'' (1690), François Lefebvre's ''Relation du voyage de l’isle d’Eutopie'' (1711), as well as many others. Denis Vairasse' ''The history of the Sevarambi'' (1675) and Gabriel de Foigny's ''La Terre australe connue'' (1676), which describe voyages to utopian civilisations in Australia, both received popular translations into English.[
Lucian's satirical line was exploited by ]François Rabelais
François Rabelais ( , ; ; born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553) was a French writer who has been called the first great French prose author. A Renaissance humanism, humanist of the French Renaissance and Greek scholars in the Renaissance, Gr ...
' ''Gargantua and Pantagruel
''The Five Books of the Lives and Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel'' (), often shortened to ''Gargantua and Pantagruel'' or the (''Five Books''), is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It tells the advent ...
'' (1532) and developed later on in Joseph Hall's '' Mundus Alter et Idem'' (1607), François Hédelin's ''Histoire du temps'' (1654), Cyrano de Bergerac
Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac ( , ; 6 March 1619 – 28 July 1655) was a French novelist, playwright, epistolarian, and duelist.
A bold and innovative author, his work was part of the libertine literature of the first half of the 17th ce ...
's ''Histoire comique contenant les États et Empires de la Lune'' (1657) and ''Fragments d’histoire comique contenant les États et Empires du Soleil'' (1662),[ Charles Sorel's ''Nouvelle Découverte du Royaume de Frisquemore'' (1662), Margaret Cavendish's '' The Blazing World'' (1666), Joshua Barnes' ''Gerania'' (1675), Bernard de Fontenelle's ''Relation de l’île de Bornéo'' (1686), ]Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; 1660 – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, merchant and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translati ...
's ''The Consolidator'' (1705), and most notably in Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric. In 1713, he became the Dean (Christianity), dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was given the sobriquet "Dean Swi ...
's ''Gulliver's Travels
''Gulliver's Travels'', originally titled ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'', is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clerg ...
'' (1726).
While the narratives themselves were romanticised, there was a desire amongst the reading public for real details of the places visited, which the authors would typically derive from works published by real-life explorers. In Francois Rabelais’ ''Gargantua and Pantagruel'', for example, details about a voyage to the New World were derived from the explorer Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier (; 31 December 14911 September 1557) was a French maritime explorer from Brittany. Jacques Cartier was the first Europeans, European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, wh ...
, while ''The Travels of John Mandeville'' borrows details from Odoric of Pordenone
Odoric of Pordenone (c. 1280–14 January 1331) was a Franciscan friar and missionary explorer from Friuli in northeast Italy. He journeyed through India, Sumatra, Java, and China, where he spent three years in the imperial capital of Khanbaliq ...
and William of Boldensele.
Eighteenth century
The eighteenth century saw the genre come into particular literary prominence. Written during the major period of imperial expansion and typically set in unexplored regions of the world such as Australasia and the Pacific, these works allowed readers to engage in fantasies of colonisation. The primary cultural exponents of the imaginary voyages during this period were Defoe's ''Gulliver's Travels'' and Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; 1660 – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, merchant and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translati ...
's ''Robinson Crusoe
''Robinson Crusoe'' ( ) is an English adventure novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. Written with a combination of Epistolary novel, epistolary, Confessional writing, confessional, and Didacticism, didactic forms, the ...
'' (1719), both of which were imitated by other authors. One such imitator, Roger Paltock's ''The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins'' (1750), incorporates the latter's scientific realism with the former's fantastical setting.[ In ''Gulliver’s Travels'', the kingdoms visited are distorted but recognisable versions of European societies; "the colonial voyage into alien culture actually serves to revalue one’s own".][ Other journeys to utopian civilisations from this period include Captain Samuel Brunt's ''A Voyage to Cacklogallinia'' (1727) and Simon Berington’s ''The Memoirs of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca'' (1737) Simon Tyssot de Patot's ''The Travels and Adventures of James Massey'' (1720), which sees the eponymous protagonist shipwrecked on the pacifistic utopia of Austral Land, is considered one of the sources of ''Gulliver's Travels''.][
The growing curiosity in exploration during this period led to many publishers printing anonymously-written accounts of voyages deliberately styled to appear as realistic as possible.] By presenting the information as potentially factual it was of greater interest to the reading public than other forms of fiction. A 1750 article in the London-based periodical '' The Monthly Review'' commented that "voyage accounts are generally looked upon as truth s they havea much stronger claim to the reader's attention, than the most striking incidents in a novel or romance." Early critical attention to the imaginary voyage genre primarily involved trying to distinguish whether these accounts were genuine or fabricated. In 1787, Charles Garnier created a thirty-six volume collection of these imaginary voyages entitled ''Voyages imaginaires, songes, visions et romans cabalistiques'' in which he attempted to distinguish between the "possible" and "impossible" journeys.
Imaginary voyage has become a natural medium for promoting new astronomic ideas. First literary space flights after Lucian were: Juan Maldonado's ''Somnium'' (1541), Johann Kepler's ''Somnium'' (1634), Francis Godwin's ''The Man in the Moone'' (1638), John Wilkins
John Wilkins (14 February 1614 – 19 November 1672) was an English Anglican ministry, Anglican clergyman, Natural philosophy, natural philosopher, and author, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was Bishop of Chester from 1 ...
' ''The Discovery of a World in the Moone'' (1638), Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Society of Jesus, Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jes ...
's ''Itinerarium extaticum'' (1656), David Russen's ''Iter lunare'' (1703), Diego de Torres Villarroel's ''Viaje fantástico'' (1723), 's ''Die geschwinde Reise auf dem Luftschiff nach der obern Welt'' (1744) – the first flight to planets, Robert Paltock's ''The life and adventures of Peter Wilkins'' (1751), Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...
's '' Micromégas'' (1752). This form of the moon voyage narrative typically uses the introduction of ‘the man of the moon’ to comment on the political reality of the author. For example, in Daniel Defoe’s ''The Consolidator'' (1705), the flying machine serves as a metaphor for parliament, while in Captain Samuel Brunt's ''A Voyage to Cacklogallinia'' (1727) the narrator searches for gold on the moon in an extended reference to the contemporary South Sea Bubble financial crash.
Nineteenth century and beyond
The works of Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright.
His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...
represented a growing interest in the mechanics of the voyage, rather than the destination. In ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' () is a science fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may inclu ...
'' (1870), the dimensions and means of travel of the submarine the Nautilus are described, while similar calculations are referred to in ''Five Weeks in a Balloon
''Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, A Journey of Discovery by Three Englishmen in Africa'' () is an adventure novel by Jules Verne, published in 1863. It is the first novel in which he perfected the "ingredients" of his later work, skillfully mixing ...
'' (1863) and ''From the Earth to the Moon
''From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minutes'' () is an 1865 novel by Jules Verne. It tells the story of the Baltimore Gun Club, a post-American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, and their attempts to build an en ...
'' (1865).
Major works of Victorian fantasy such as H. Rider Haggard's '' She: A History of Adventure'' (1886) and William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditiona ...
' '' The Well at the World's End'' can be viewed within the genre of the Imaginary Voyage. Twentieth century inheritors include L. Frank Baum's '' The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' (1900), David Lindsay's '' A Voyage to Arcturus'' (1920), Norton Juster's ''The Phantom Tollbooth
''The Phantom Tollbooth'' is a children's fantasy adventure novel written by Norton Juster, with illustrations by Jules Feiffer, first published in 1961 in literature, 1961. The story follows a bored young boy named Milo who unexpectedly recei ...
'' (1961) and Angela Carter
Angela Olive Pearce (formerly Carter, Stalker; 7 May 1940 – 16 February 1992), who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picar ...
's '' The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman'' (1972).
See also
* Baron Munchausen
* Accidental travel
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
External links
Derrick Moors. Imaginary Voyages
{{Authority control
Science fiction genres
Literary genres
Travel writing
Science fantasy
Adventure fiction
Fantasy tropes