In this contribution I investigate how James Boswell manages to
depart from the so far usual concept of the travelogue in order to
introduce new concepts to the genre: exciting tales from flashbulb
memories, and the focus on the traveller’s special, subjective
experiences. This development was supported by the influence of
Sterne’s Sentimental Journey (1768) and Locke’s and Rousseau’s
concepts of subjectivity. This new concept of the travelogue has
made Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) a
prototype for the contemporary travel report, according to
Voßkamp’s (1977) Haller’s (1993), and Botor’s (1999) standards.
I will engage in the comparison to Long Way Down (2007) by
Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor, the only other pair of
travel writers known to me, and examples from other travelogues
by, for example, Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, and Christina
Dodwell. All the authors chosen give particularly entertaining
additional examples of flashbulb memories presented in the
manner of Boswell’s prototype