This publication features select papers presented at the 4th International Conference of the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation, entitled ‘Textualising the Experience – Digitalising the Text: Cyprus through Travel Literature (15th-18th c.)’, held in collaboration with the University of Cyprus (Nicosia, 2019). The volume consists of 15 essays in three parts (‘Zefyros’, ‘Travellers and Travel Literature’, ‘Representations of Space and People’). Using as their basis an innovative scientific methodology for travel literature, which was implemented in the framework of the Zefyros research programme, the scientists who participated in the conference considered issues regarding Cyprus drawn from a corpus of 125 travel texts dating from the 15th to the 18th centuries.

The conference and its papers reveal the varied skein of interest which travel literature continues to hold for us. The potential for new approaches is also revealed, even though four decades of intensive research and writing on that literary genre have already gone by.