Immediately, I can only think of Jean Santeuil, Proust's first and unfinished novel where this happens, though it is not a travel work.I am now completing my monograph on The Evolution of Proust's' Combray' A Genetic Study.See perhaps my chapter on travel in my monograph on Crossing Borders:The Interrelation of Fact and Fiction in Historical Works, Travel Tales...It has a good bibliography.

Thanks Maureen, I’ll make sure to explore these references. My main focus is on travel literature, but I am casting a broader net with this question, trying to get a sense of the diversity of uses of the device of found manuscript, so the Proust reference is great.

best,

Martin

One, famous and brilliant it it's form is Potocki's The Saragossa Manuscript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manuscript_Found_in_Saragossa.

Hope it'll help You,

m

Thanks!

If you are interested in contemporary russian literature as well, you may take into consideration Pelevin's Buddha's little finger, but it is not "pure" travel literature, but time travel literature.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-670-89168-9

Spaniard Juan Valera's most widely-known novel Pepita Jiménez (1874) uses the narrative device of the found manuscript, although this is not travel literature either. Obviously, Cervantes's Don Quijote applies this device several times at different diegetic levels. The most prominent instance is the manuscript found in the Alcana of Toledo (Part I, Chapter 9), which allows the fictional author/editor to continue his narration of the story. Another fascinating text in this regard (and others) is Paraules d’Opòton el Vell, by the Catalan Avel·lí Artís-Gener, the 'chronicle' of the discovery and colonisation of Europe by Mexicans. This text might be a closer fit with your focus on travel literature. I hope this helps.

For a quick overview (in Spanish) of some of the narrative devices used in Pepita Jiménez: Chapter La epistolaridad de «Pepita Jiménez» de Juan Valera

The puertorican novel La noche oscura del Niño Avilés by Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá (1984) uses the narrative device of the found manuscript.

I wrote these books about that novel: El imaginario del muy diablejo (2007) y La historia desde el capricho o los caprichos de la historia (2011). I can send you these ones.

You have the found manuscript device on Rabelais' Gargantua

Great research project. I also have a book to recommend and share a quote. The title is Adolphe by Benjamin Constant Available in iBooks.:

Quote "Some months later, at Naples, I received a letter from our host at Cerenza, with a box found on the Strongoli road, the road that the stranger and I had taken, but separately. The innkeeper who had sent it to me felt sure that it belonged to one of us. The box contained a quantity of very old letters either unaddressed or on which the addresses and signatures were illegible, a woman’s portrait and a notebook containing the anecdote or story you are about to read. The stranger to whom these things belonged had gone without leaving me any way of writing to him, and I kept them for ten years,......"

Excerpt From

📷

Adolphe

Benjamin Constant

Category: Classics

📷

Hello. If you read French, there is an entire book on the topic of the found manuscript with papers from a conference: Le topos du manuscrit trouvé. Ed. Jan Herman and Fernand Hallyn. Leuven and Paris: Editions Peeters, 1999.

Thank you Armine, I’ll make sure to get that book right away!

All the suggestions received so far are extremely helpful. Thanks!

I don't know whether this is relevant to your project, but I think you could rely on Gothic fiction: all Gothic novels from the 18th up to the 19th century start off with the recovery of a manuscript and all the ensuing events. Of note, in this context, is Hogg's "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner". I don't know whether I've answered your question. Sounds a very interesting and thought-provoking project: good luck!

You can find this topic in "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez. In fact, at the end of the novel, we discover that we're reading this found text. Il consiglio d'Egitto, by Leonardo Sciacia is a paradigmatic example of the resource.

The popular Umberto Eco's "The name of the Rose" is narrated around the search of a hidden text.

Also José Saramago's História do Cerco de Lisboa and many short stories by Jorge Luis Borges play with this resource.

I agree with the comment about Gothic literature. One example that may be particularly helpful to you as it's an Anglo-Irish Gothic that could arguably double as a sort of travel narrative is Charles Maturin's _Melmoth the Wanderer_.

Don't forget Cide Hamete Benengeli's manuscript!!! (Quijote, VIII y IX).

I forgot to include in my answer these: "Manuscript Found in a Bottle", by Edgar Allan Poe, and Stanisław Lem's "Pamiętnik znaleziony w wannie" ( Memoirs Found in a Bathtube)

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850.

The beautiful, melancholic last novel of Brazilian author Machado de Assis, Memorial de Aires, from 1908. "The note to readers" presents it as a found manuscript. It is very much not a travel story, however

"La suerte quiso que, por muerte de un conocido mío, cayese en mis manos un manuscrito cuyo título es: Cartas escritas por un moro llamado Gazel Ben-Aly, a Ben-Beley, amigo suyo, sobre los usos y costumbres de los españoles antiguos y modernos, con algunas respuestas de Ben-Beley, y otras cartas relativas a éstas.

Acabó su vida mi amigo antes que pudiese explicarme si eran efectivamente cartas escritas por el autor que sonaba, como se podía inferir del estilo, o si era pasatiempo del difunto, en cuya composición hubiese gastado los últimos años de su vida. Ambos casos son posibles: el lector juzgará lo que piense más acertado, conociendo que si estas Cartas son útiles o inútiles, malas o buenas, importa poco la calidad del verdadero autor."

Cartas marruecas - José Cadalso (1741-1782)

http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/cartas-marruecas--0/

Many thanks for this, Dr Adsuar,

Maureen Ramsden

nice question

Alasdair Gray's "Poor Things"

James Robertson's "The Testament of Gideon Mack"

James Hogg "The private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner"

László Krasznahorkai's "War and war"

also I think that Nabokov's "Pale Fire" could enter in the list