SOURCE: Sharp, Joanne P. “Writing Over the Map of Provence: The Touristic Therapy of A Year in Provence.” In Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing, edited by James Duncan and Derek Gregory, pp. 200-18. London: Routledge, 1999.

In the following essay, Sharp provides a critical appraisal of Peter Mayle's popular memoirs about his life in Provence.

Recently in the West there has been much lamenting of the demise of cultural difference, a public dismay over the closure of the Age of Exploration and the initiation of an age of homogenization. Despite this fear, the phenomenon of travel writing—a literary form apparently dependent upon difference and therefore doomed by its disappearance—is as popular as ever. Indeed, there appears to be something of a ‘boom’ in travel writing, especially in contemporary English society. Rarely have there been so many television programmes dedicated to all aspects of travel and tourism...