Intertextuality in Travel Writing: Shaping Identity through Textual Relations in Travelogues by Karl Philipp Moritz and Mary Shelley

In modern travel writing, questions of identity (as well as alterity and similarity) are often central. The identities in question include that of the narrator/traveller and those of the people encountered on the journey: other travellers or natives – i.e. travellees, a term coined by Mary Pratt (1992) and further developed by Wendy Bracewell (2015). The latter are often depicted as ‘other’. Importantly, the identities of the intended and actual readers also form part of this network. In travel writing, different textual strategies are applied to depict, shape and perform these identities. Alongside devices such as literary multilingualism and intermediality, one such strategy is intertextuality, i.e. the inclusion of concrete references to other texts (and authors), but also the complex network of texts that is evoked by the trave-logue and in the process of reading travelogues. In what follows, I argue that these references to and quotations from other texts are used to create, describe and represent identity in travel writing. I focus on the interplay between intertextuality and (collective and individual) iden-tity discourses in two examples of European travel writing from the late 18th and mid-19th centuries – the heyday of the genre – namely Karl Philipp Moritz’s Reisen eines Deutschen in England im Jahre 1782 (1783) and Mary Shelley’s Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844). Intertextual references in these two travelogues are used for diverse purposes: Moritz employs various forms of intertextuality and intermediality in his travelogue to posi-tion himself as an informed and educated traveller who is familiar with the English language and English literature, situating himself as an intermediary for his readers. Shelley, on the other hand, uses intertextual references to express her solidarity with the Italians and their fight for independence. In addition, she uses them to point out histor-ical connections and to remember history through literature. Both authors use what I would like to call multilingual intertextuality; that is, they practise code-switching and give (some of) their references in other languages – English in Moritz’s case and Italian in Shelley’s.