Whenever we think of “literary travel,” or “travel literature”, we are liable to encounter the history and poetics of genres forming an essential part of what we call literary history.
In this paper I seek to explore the “great literary voyages” that were to substantially contribute to the Western canon. The travels and trials of Odysseus in the Odyssey, of Vergil in Dante’s Divina Commedia and of the hero of Sándor Petőfi’s epic poem, John the Valiant, are subject to a parallel close reading to provide the reader with a clue about the Hungarian poet’s familiarity with Dante’s work in the original Italian.
Drawing up a complex network of locations in and between the above poetic texts, connected to each other in a complex and intriguing way sheds light on the poetic mind and its unique relation to poetic tradition.