The metaphor that depicts the novel as charting new territory and the writer as explorer
is one of the tropes of literature. Another is the metaphor that represents life as a
‘journey.’ Indeed it constitutes one of the central tropes of Western literature and myth:
the journey of exploration, of initiation, of trial and redemption, where the main
character embarks on a voyage of discovery that is also one of self-discovery and selftransformation.
In his article in this issue Charles Moseley uncovers the moral and
symbolic force of the geographical narrative in one of the earliest examples, that of
Mandeville’s Travels, an account of the part-fabled journey of the Western narrator to
the East. His travels across ‘macrospace’ cannot be plotted onto any modern map but
the trajectory of his journey reflects the theological and historical ordering of space of
the Medieval worldview, where geography is a physical representation of the sacred.
Even in the secular variants of this trope, that include the picaresque novel and the
bildungsroman, Geography is not simply the framework of travel, the background
against which the action is played out, but an actor in the drama, confronting the hero
with a series of physical trials and obstacles. As the journey unfolds, the hero moves not
only through a physical landscape but also through the changing social landscapes that
each stage brings. His mature self is built up through these successive encounters as the
experiential and symbolic journey progresses.