Rewriting and remediation

Abstract

The reviews in the Monthly Review and La Décade philosophique of Bartolomeo Benincasa's travelogue from revolutionary France, Journal d'un voyageur neutre (1796), offer valuable insight into the periodical practice of the travel review. The present article examines the processes of rewriting and remediation at work in these reviews, showing how they were driven by political concerns, but also by different views on the function of the review within the larger framework of the periodicals. The article argues that rewriting and remediation are important analytical tools to be put to use if book reviews are to be better exploited as historical sources. We can thereby acquire a better understanding of the role of the travel review in late-eighteenth-century literary culture, notably of its complexity in transmitting and constructing perceptions of major historical events such as the French Revolution.