Le récit de voyage à l’orée du romantisme

This article presents a panorama of writings on scientific research in the romantic period. In a travel literature that seeks to both please and to educate, the approaches to travel narratives of a scientific nature differ and demonstrate divergent aims. Two positions of this literature stand out: one consists of the writer-traveller fading away to make way for the unique object of the narrative; the other, marking an epistemological shift, favours the meditation of the gaze.