Representation of People and Landscapes: De Botton's Atypical, SubversiveTravel Guide Anonymous 12th Grade

Through their choice of textual form and features, authors subjectively represent their views on the connection between people and landscapes. This is exemplary of Alain De Botton’s postmodern, multimodal text “The Art of Travel” (2002) which persuasively and powerfully represents how personal connections may be evoked by landscapes through an individual’s imagination, receptivity or identity. To represent these notions, De Botton’s subverts the traditional travel guide to provide a less subjective exploration by utilising anecdotal passages interspersed within essay-style writing, amalgamating personal reflection with cultural analysis.

De Botton didactically portrays the ability of imagined landscapes to limitlessly and enduringly transport one from an inadequate reality into a psychologically desired realm. Subverting the traditional travel guide, De Botton employs philosophical musings and travel anecdotes to assert his own insightful opinion that the key to landscapes evoking personal connections may be through the imagination. He purposely presents the power of the imagination to evoke memories and personal yearnings through the intertextuality of his remembered landscape “William Hodges’ Tahiti revisited”, portraying the...