The Grand Tour: National Identity and Intercultural Communication

Abstract

The paper aims at considering the historical, social and cultural context that favoured, in the eighteenth century, increased mobility of English travellers beyond national borders and the institutionalisation of the Grand Tour of Europe. Drawing on various sources that discuss the educational and/or medical advantages and disadvantages of travelling on the Continent, the investigation of this eighteenth-century cultural phenomenon focuses, in particular, on the impact of cross-cultural encounters on the English travellers’ sense of national identity and their representations of the foreign Other.