This study seeks to provide a geographical commentary upon documents relating to travel in the Cape during the second half of the eighteenth century. These documents include not only books of travel, but also travel journals, letters and maps both published and unpublished. They have been examined in the first place to ascertain what light they throw on the evolution of geographical ideas concerning the phenomena now capable of classification under the broad heading of physical geography. Secondly the have been viewed as part of the geography of travel and exploration which deals with routes, the identification of places, the explanation of place-names and the evolution of the map, or in its absence, of the mental picture of the regions reported on. Historical events are also considered, for the geographer can no more afford to ignore history than the historian dare cast a blind eye upon geography.

Bibliography: leaves 288-307 / viii, 307 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of History, 1992

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As a large-scale international cultural phenomenon, the Jerusalem pilgrimage must be approached comparatively. This project compares the pilgrimage accounts of two Germans and two Englishmen who travelled to Jerusalem in the second half of the long fifteenth century. The texts are those of William Wey, (written c.1470), Bernhard von Breydenbach (printed 1486), Arnold von Harff (written 1499) and the 'Pylgrymage of Sir Richard Guylforde', composed by his anonymous chaplain (printed 1511). Each chapter focuses on a pilgrim, and one of four thematic topics: genre, the religious other, curiosity and print. This project treats these works as literary texts which can be approached from the perspective of cultural history, rather than as historical sources. The project, therefore, is more a consideration of how the pilgrimage is represented than it is about the events of each pilgrimage, and so it looks at the pilgrimages created in writing. Pilgrimage writings tend to focus on Jerusalem's spiritual significance, rather than its worldly position. In this sense, textual representations of travel to Jerusalem represent something of a disconnect with travel to other physical destinations, and the conceptual space of pilgrimage will be of key significance to this thesis. This has implications for practice as well as writing, and therefore the thesis will address how the writers consider their journeys, as well as the idea of virtual pilgrimage. The thesis engages with questions of identity, and how it is presented, as well as the authors' relationship with their audiences. This necessitates analysing collective identity, as well as the different audiences for printed and manuscript texts. The most important research question, bringing together these issues, considers whether the authors' different geographical origins affect their self-presentation and understanding of pilgrimage. This leads to my central contention: that pilgrimage must be portrayed as a single, unified experience.