"Doom'd to Wander": Exile, Memoirs, And Early Modern Travel Narrative (Critical Essay‪)‬

Writing from the perspective of travel literature, Luigi Monga, in "'Doom'd to Wander: Exile, Memoirs, and Early Modern Travel Narrative," analyzes the extent to which exile, an obvious form of spatial displacement, is connected to travel, and thus writing about exile is akin to travel narrative. Despotic rulers, political or religious leaders dispatched the best of their citizens from their native country. Setting aside the most famous Italian exiles of the early modern period, from Dante to Machiavelli, Casanova and Foscolo, Monga selects a few examples of French and British expatriates who chose, by direct authority or personal decision, to seek freedom and serenity abroad. In most such cases Italy was the final end of their escape. Avoiding the troubles of 1588, an "annus mirabilis" in a continent fraught with religious conflicts, and "doom'd to wander" abroad during the 17th-century "Great Rebellion," the most promising youth of France and England escaped to Italy, finding there the foundation of an intellectual "locus amoenus." These bright individuals involved in the Grand Tour wrote about their personal experiences, shaping a widely read travel narrative that helped maintain an endless flow of tourists. On the other hand, Cardinal de Retz, the archbishop of Paris who opposed a despotic Louis XIV, chose to set off to Rome, pursued by the wrath of his king and the loathing of his religious brothers. Returning to France, an apparent loser in an uneven fight and forced to an internal exile in a faraway monastery, he continued nevertheless his battle, writing a biased, but influential autobiography, a memorial of his struggle that is also a dazzling travel narrative. In the course of human history individuals in power rarely failed to use every means at their disposal to dispatch their political adversaries. Whenever execution, the most customary solution, was inconvenient or unfeasible, legal ouster or threats leading to voluntary exile became bloodless alternatives, (1) forcing dissenters to find a new home abroad. (2) At the origin of this predicament there is the problem of "alterity": an inexplicably visceral feeling, borne by the realization that other social groups are different. Because of its collective strength, the most powerful group considers itself better than others and therefore rules.