Hungary and Transylvania in Women’s Travel Writing in the 19th Century
Travel narratives written in the mid-nineteenth century served as valuable sources of information for the Western society regarding remote and exotic places as well as different cultures. Hungary and Transylvania became increasingly interesting and challenging destinations for British and Ameri...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
| Published: |
Scientia Publishing House
2022-12-01
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| Series: | Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: Philologica |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://acta.sapientia.ro/content/docs/143-07.pdf |
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| Summary: | Travel narratives written in the mid-nineteenth century served as
valuable sources of information for the Western society regarding remote
and exotic places as well as different cultures. Hungary and Transylvania
became increasingly interesting and challenging destinations for British and
American travellers, especially in the pre- and post-revolutionary periods.
Julia Pardoe’s The City of the Magyar, or Hungary and Her Institutions in
1839–1840 (1840) and Nina Elizabeth Mazuchelli’s memoir, Magyarland
(1881), provided extensive accounts of a multi-ethnic Hungary, discussing
various populations as being distinct from the mainstream society, as well
as their folklore, history, manners, and customs. In analysing Pardoe’s and
Mazuchelli’s memoirs, I am interested in the ways in which they portray
Hungarian otherness as contrasted to Western, more precisely British
national ideals. Making use of the theories of imagology, I will argue that the
perceptions of a national character (hetero-images) as well as the defining
of the (travellers’) self against the Other (auto-images) are determined and
perpetuated by cultural distinctions and by the various forms of cultural
clash of the British and the East-Central European. Moreover, through a
comparative approach, I will also look at the differences in the travellers’
perception of the same country but in two very different historical and
political time periods: Pardoe’s journey in Hungary took place in 1840, before
the War of Independence, while Mazuchelli visited the country in 1881, long
after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867. The findings will indicate
that the main features of the image of Hungarian national identity, as it is
represented in the travelogues, are generated by the historical, cultural,
and socio-political developments before and after the Hungarian War of
Independence (1848–49). |
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| ISSN: | 2067-5151 2068-2956 |