O Elogio da Sedentarização na Viagem Contemporânea: Literatura, Pintura e Ecrã

Abstract

If it is true that the age we find ourselves in is “the†age of travelling then it is no less accurate to say that tourists and travellers increasingly travel shut off from the world in front of their screens at home, travelling via them. In fact, the new technologies merely enable us to “travel†within ourselves in another way, not jeopardising the essence of travelling but rather allowing us a different way of experiencing the world. Thanks to our networked world and technological modernity, it is possible today to see and to “be in†any place on our earthly planet; in other words, it has become virtually impossible to set off on a journey to any unknown, uncatalogued spot. So why not abdicate from the material experience and, instead, enjoy the comforts of armchair travelling through the accounts of others, spending no money and suffering no woes? Why not borrow the odyssey of those who travel and make it our own, personalising it? But even then, could anyone claim the journey did not happen? This article aims to delve into travelling’s other side, taking the dynamic of the individual who chooses sedentarism to travel in “another†way. The armchair traveller from the time of Pliny the Elder (first century) evolved until he reached the contemporary era in a cross-border dynamic that is defined from a parallel world, but one that is no less rich.