Géographie urbaine et espaces du voyage: les voyageuses britanniques à Lyon, fin XVIIIe-début XIXe siècle

International audienceTravel narratives generally include spatial notations. These notations are frequently allusive and implicit in regard to the places actually encountered and perceived, often selected according to personal, oriented choices. Understanding such choices makes it possible to grasp how a given person perceived a city, in a given context, through a trip prepared in specific cultural and material conditions. In order to do so, we need to build sufficient knowledge of places at the time of travel. This involves the reconstruction of places and social environment, thanks to varied sources, and the study of the buildings people saw and lived in. This may be done through the study of past representations combined with that of the existing fabric, especially hotels where British women trevellers (and generally male ones too) stayed. We also need to map the routes to, from and through the city, rarely mentioned in narratives, but that can be reconstructed thanks to the practices of space. The aim is to foster a berter understanding of what is conventional and more or less predefined in the Lyons stay, and where the originality of a given narrative may lay, bearing in mind the the narrative itself, once published, may contribute significantly to the making of the image of the city