| This project examines the two methods of philosophical travel as presented in Michel de Montaigne's Essays and Francis Bacon's works, respectively. In the Montaignean method, the individual travels in order to experience a sense of alienation that enables him to parse out nature and custom within himself. By the Baconian method, on the other hand, the traveler collects empirical data regarding human behavior throughout the world and ultimately engages in a collective project to discover human nature through induction. Both of these methods tackle the ever-present conflict between natural and customary standards as the ultimate arbiter of political questions. Travel enables this confrontation because it is only when we come into contact with customs that contradict our own that we begin to realize the artificiality of human custom generally speaking. My dissertation explores the strengths and weaknesses of these two methods, and examines the historical relationship between the two as it manifests in Shakespeare's Tempest and Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Because this analysis seeks to come to terms with the search for human nature in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, particularly as it manifests itself through philosophical treatments of travel, I choose to analyze works of philosophy side-by-side with contemporary literary pieces. Perhaps more so than many other types of writing, literature in itself can mirror or model the travel experience, in that we engage deeply with the 'other' in order to find ourselves, and ultimately to find each other, thus duplicating the experience of physical dislocation in a highly effective manner. |
