LITERARY MYTHS OF NEW ZEALAND A Comparative Analysis of German Travel Journals on New Zealand: 1777-

This thesis presents a comparative analysis of German travel journals on the destination of New Zealand. Part I of the thesis justifies the use of travel journals as a basis for research in tourism, suggesting that they provide an insight into the minds of both the authors, and their society and that they produce the basis of tourist images of a destination. Part II provides a select analysis of five historical travel journals dating from between 1777 and 1889. The images of New Zealand's landscape and culture presented by the authors are discussed with particular emphasis on how and why those images were created. Part Ill follows the major influences on the creation of an image of Modernity, Romanticism, Picturesque and Exoticism from early travel journals and contextualises them within contemporary German travel accounts of New Zealand. This analysis is intended to establish to what extent the historical images and myths of New Zealand continue to influence the contemporary descriptions of the country, establishing the extent to which German tourists ' images of New Zealand are mythological. Key words: travel journals; tourism; German; New Zealand; image; Modernity