Travelers to an Antique Land

In Travelers to an Antique Land, Robert Eisner embarks on an engaging journey through centuries of fascination with Greece—a land alternately imagined, idealized, and rediscovered by visitors from across the world. Blending historical narrative and literary analysis, Eisner charts the evolution of travel to Greece, focusing on how successive generations of writers, scholars, and adventurers experienced and depicted its landscapes, people, and ruins. From antiquarian explorers and Grand Tourists to modern-day expatriates and bohemian wanderers, the book brings to life the shifting motivations, expectations, and emotions that have propelled travelers across Aegean shores and up mythic mountains. Drawing on diaries, guidebooks, novels, and personal memoirs, Eisner weaves a rich tapestry that connects the spiritual and sensory allure of Greece—with its ancient ruins, radiant light, and enduring myths—to the cultural baggage and personal longings of those who journeyed there. Foregrounding English-language writers but attentive to broader European currents, Travelers to an Antique Land explores topics such as the cult of classical antiquity, the search for “authentic” ruins, the Romantic allure of the wild Greek landscape, and the tensions between imagined and real encounter. Eisner thoughtfully considers what travelers sought, what they found, and what they wrote home about—probing the boundary between self and other, memory and myth. Travelers to an Antique Land will delight readers interested in travel literature, classical reception, and the abiding magic of Greece.