Description
Western travelers have long been attracted to the Balkan Peninsula by their own exotic and dangerous myths about it, but the tables are turned here as scholars of literature, history, and travel from Britain and the region examine travel literature by people from the lower righthand of Europe. Their topics include early modern Greek travel writing on Europe, Eurotopia as manifesto in Dinicu Golescu's 1826 Account of My Travels, images of western Europe in Bulgarian travel writing of the Communist era 1945-85, and being a man in Balkan travel writing. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Read More
In writings about travel, the Balkans appear most often as a place travelled to. Western accounts of the Balkans revel in the different and the exotic, the violent and the primitive - traits that serve (according to many commentators) as a foil to self-congratulatory definitions of the West as modern, progressive and rational. However, the Balkans have also long been travelled from. The region’s writers have given accounts of their travels in the West and elsewhere, saying something in the process about themselves and their place in the world. The analyses presented here, ranging from those of 16th-century Greek humanists to 19th-century Romanian reformers to 20th-century writers, socialists and ‘men-of-the-world’, suggest that travellers from the region have also created their own identities through their encounters with Europe. Consequently, this book challenges assumptions of Western discursive hegemony, while at the same time exploring Balkan ‘Occidentalisms’.
Read Less