In the last few decades travel reports have attracted considerable and varied research from many fields. In spite of this increased interest Swedish research on travelogues has not to any greater extent focused on the context and history of the genre. In my recently published monograph Berättaren på resa: Svenska resenärers reseberättelser 1667‒1829 [The traveller as narrator: the travelogues of Swedish travellers 1667‒1829] (2015), 646 pp., I have aimed at giving a historical and contextualized overview of the genre and its repertoire as it appears in Swedish travelogues published in print during the long 18th century, ca. 70 titles. In order to structure this extensive and diverse material I have chosen to focus on the persona of the traveller/narrator . Briefly put I have seen the persona of the traveller/narrator as it appears in the travelogue and the context in which it was constructed and used, as determining the genre/subgenre (or perhaps rather the generic repertoire) of the specific travelogue.
In my paper I begin with a brief overview of the material and then go on to discuss how the traveller’s persona relates to on the one hand context and on the other hand the generic repertoire of the travelogue. Finally I give a brief presentation of four personae, their contexts and the paratextual and textual rhetorical strategies that characterizes their travelogues.