Worldwide Travel in World Literature: From the Plot of the Test to the Metaphor of Knowledge The worldwide travel as a literary plot has undergone a complex evolution: from a documentary chronicle of real expeditions to a universal metaphor of the life path, the knowledge of the world, and oneself. In world literature, it serves not just as an exotic backdrop, but as a structuring principle, a laboratory for testing the hero, ideas, and social norms. 1. The Phase of Documentalism and Philosophical Reflection (XVI–XVIII centuries). The first texts were actually reports, but already carried a powerful philosophical charge. Antonio Pigafetta, "The Voyage of Magellan" (approx. 1525): The chronicle of the first worldwide voyage (1519-1522) is not just a description of the route, but a text of confrontation. For the first time, an European details the total alienness of foreign worlds (Patagonia, the Philippines). Travel here is an act of heroic and sacrificial overcoming of the known boundaries, where success (the return of one ship out of five) is akin to a miracle. "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift (1726): Although Lemuel Gulliver does not undertake a technically worldwide journey, his four voyages to unknown lands follow the same logic of comparative anthropological research. Swift uses the form of travel for sharp satire on European civilization, politics, and human nature. Each land is a "mirror-monstrous," exaggerating vices or virtues. The worldwide journey (as a series of radically different worlds) becomes a method of estrangement and criticism. 2. Romanticism and Science Fiction: Travel as an Internal Quest and Utopia (XIX century). In the XIX century, the worldwide plot is romanticized and complicated. "The Children of Captain Grant" (1868) and "Around the World in 80 Days" (1872) by Jules Verne. Verne creates two principal models. "The Children of Captain Grant" is a quest journey where the goal (searching for the father) justifies the movement along the ... Read more