Mark Twain’s travelogue Innocents Abroad (1869) was the author’s first sustained narrative form; it became a great literary and financial success during his lifetime. Considered a canonical text of travel writing in English, it was translated into Polish as late as 1992. The article discusses the Polish translation, focusing on the relevant features of the source text: the paratexts and the ‘translational dominant(s)’ that contribute to the original’s popularity. As Innocents Abroad belongs to popular literature, its humor is one of the essential dominants. The analysis demonstrates that the translator made a considerable effort to render the humor of the novel: the differences and compensation strategies result not so much from the differences between the languages and cultures but from the translator’s consistent decisions.
The present paper focuses on the travel notes by Michel Vieuchange (1904-1930), a young Frenchman who decided to reach Smara, a holy Muslim city located in the middle of the desert, to describe it, and to e term used by Michel Collot means telling your life through the places that has affected you. In the case of Vieuchange’s notes the geographical descriptions intervene with the description of the personality of the traveler and form a whole. The paper shows that three cities, Tiznit, Tigilit and Smara, mark three stages of the travel and correspond to different aspects of Vieuchange’s personality.
This paper analyses the descriptions of the Catalan language provided by foreign travellers who journeyed through the Catalan-speaking territories in the second third of the 19th century. It examines their observations and linguistic perceptions of the Catalan language and the language spoken by the inhabitants of these regions. Additionally, the study delves into the names used by travellers to refer to the Catalan language, its origins, its relationship with other Romance languages, and its status among them. While some travellers may not have provided detailed descriptions of the language due to the diverse purposes of their journeys, their various accounts and statements allow us to deduce their positions and opinions in addressing these questions. This analysis takes place during the 19th century, a period in which Romance philology was still an emerging area of research.
The main focus of the article is a literary picture of Central European countries asan internally diversified, unique, cultural, anthropological phenomenon polarizedaccording to the cultural antinomies: East-West and Central-Peripheries. Myanalysis is based Z. Szczerek's Międzymorze’s a contemporary memoir of thejourney through Central and Eastern Europe. Modernity and the process of redevelopmentis a point of reference for Szczerek's contemporary view on CentralEurope. His strategy made it evident, that categories like borderland, periphery,diversity, are distinctive for Central European reality indicating its division, borderfluidity and civilizational amorphism.
Among the various sources for the study of Polish-German relations in the 17th century, also reports from diplomatic travels deserve attention. To date, they have been mainly studied by historians who analysed the information layer pertaining to the events presented. A significant number of these texts have not yet been published. The purpose of the paper is to identify travelogue as a type of literature, which, due to its characteristics, can also be used for imagological research. The research problem is an attempt to define travelogue as a type of text, although such pieces of writing generally evade definition because of the diverse factors that influence the final shape of the work. The history of research on travelogues in Germany dates back to the 19th century, when they were mainly dealt with by bibliographers and geographers on account of the classic, „narrow“ interpretation of literature, which did not include functional texts. The research method consists in an analysis of the report written by Christoph Leopold Schaffgotsch, an imperial legate, who travelled to Warsaw and participated in the election of the king of Poland in 1699. Politics, which was both the background of events and the main motive for his travel and the writing of the report, undoubtedly left a mark on the content and the image of the Polish society conveyed by the work. Attention should also be drawn to the numerous known, albeit not yet published reports from diplomatic travels, stored e.g. in the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna. The author makes the claim that their inclusion could introduce a new quality in the research on the German image of Poles in the 17th century.
The article presents the French edition-printed in The Hague in 1723- of a significant example of travel literature from the end of the 17th century: A Journey into Greece (1682) by Sir George Wheler (1651–1724). The book made a profound mark on the studies of archeology, epigraphy, and the numismatics of the Balkans, Greece, and the Byzantine world. The article illustrates the significant data collected by the English traveler, botanist, scholar of classical antiquity, and clergyman, relating to the cultural and confessional mosaic in the space of southeastern Europe. His descriptions should be interpreted as a representative portrait of the remains of the ancient Euro‑Mediterranean ecumene. The traveler-churchman’s spirit of observation and sensitivity made Wheler a model author in the scholarly travel literature of the 17th century.
The travel reports about observations and experiences journalists of the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT made while travelling in the GDR in the years 1964 and 1986 and which they published in books belong to the genre of travel literature (reference is made to Goethe, Schummel and Döblin). Both travels were made at the invitation of the government of the GDR and were allegedly completely free – but part of a “plan”. Due to the isolation resulting from the construction of the Berlin wall in 1961, both books met with great public interest. In their politically accented report, obviously designed to medially support the so-called “new East politics” of the Brandt government, the journalists paint a glowing picture, minimizing the reality of the party dictatorship, even though solid analyses of the actual conditions in the GDR were available. This can be compared to Lion Feuchtwanger’s “Moskau 1937” which he published “for his friends” about his travel to Moscow. However, the communist Feuchtwanger openly expressed his sympathy and characterized the Soviet Union as a dictatorship. To sum up, the reports of the ZEIT journalists can be classified as ‘political-fictional’ literature of purpose, on the one hand, because of their concealed political objective, and on the other hand, because the authors, due to their salon Marxist background, were, like Feuchtwanger, possibly of the opinion that they saw something “great”.
In the last fifty or so years, Grand Tour has become a very popular and extensively researched phenomenon. Although mainstream researchers have analyzed various aspects of the Grand Tour, they have tended to adopt a narrow definition limited to the experiences of young English gentlemen undertaking a study tour of Italy and France. This article poses a somewhat provocative question: was the Grand Tour feasible as a study tour of an English gentleman visiting Poland- Lithuania? Based on contemporary travel writing, the author reveals the challenges and the difficult logistics of such an undertaking.
Odwołując się do Saidowskiego rozumienia praktyk orientalizacyjnych jako realizacji potrzeb kolonizacji Wschodu, niniejszy artykuł ma za zadanie zaprezentować obecność owych praktyk w postkolonialnej literaturze podróżniczej. Analiza dwóch tekstów autorstwa brytyjskich podróżników opisujących swoją podróż w rejony Bliskiego Wschodu: Williama Dalrymple’a From the Holy Mountain i Colina Thubrona Mirror to Damascus, ma za zadanie przedstawić sposób, w jaki przekonanie o egzotyce wchodnich obszarów, głęboko zakorzenione w kulturze europejskiej, prowokuje rozczarowania eurocentrycznym sposobem klasyfikacji tego obszaru oraz potrzebę poszerzenia znaczenia egzotyki o element europejskiej tożsamości.
Texts classified as travel literature remain underused material in the teaching of world literature, as well as within Polish studies. This article attempts to rectify this by formulating an original teaching proposal. It is intended to help construct curricula for future courses on world literature in Polish studies. In terms of genre, the proposal is based on the use of a wide range of foreign travel writing originating in different cultural environments and historical periods, and representing various literary genres. With reference to teaching methods, this proposal is based on the simultaneous and coordinated use of two modern teaching techniques: presenting students with tasks requiring creative thinking and with open-ended problems intended to provoke intellectual effort. Student activity, supervised by the teacher, thus becomes one of the main objectives of the class. The form of teaching that is most conducive to the realisation of this teaching proposal is a conversation-based class and lecture. Both facilitate effective, multi-vectorial intellectual interaction and team work.
PL
Teksty zaliczane do literatury podróżniczej pozostają materiałem niedostatecznie wykorzystywanym w dydaktyce literatury światowej, a także w obrębie studiów polonistycznych. Niniejszy artykuł stara się wyjść naprzeciw takiemu stanowi rzeczy, formułując autorską propozycję dydaktyczną. W zamierzeniu ma ona pomóc w konstruowaniu programów przyszłych kursów literatury światowej na studiach polonistycznych. W planie genologicznym bazuje ona na wykorzystaniu szerokiej gamy zagranicznych utworów podróżopisarskich, pochodzących z różnych kręgów kulturowych i odmiennych epok historycznoliterackich oraz reprezentujących rozmaite gatunki literackie. Z kolei w planie wykonawczym jej istota dydaktyczna bazuje na jednoczesnym i skoordynowanym wykorzystaniu dwóch nowoczesnych technik nauczania: sformułowaniu zadań o charakterze kreacyjnym oraz na postawieniu otwartych pytań o charakterze problemowym, mających sprowokować studentów do wysiłku intelektualnego. Aktywność studentów staje się dzięki temu jednym z głównych celów zajęć dydaktycznych, prowadzonych przez nauczyciela kontrolującego całość tak sprofilowanego procesu dydaktycznego. Formą nauczania najbardziej sprzyjającą realizacji tej idei dydaktycznej staje się zaś konwersatorium lub wykład konwersatoryjny, które ułatwiają efektywną, wielowektorową interakcję intelektualną i współpracę zespołową.
The article deals with three travel books (Sorgmunter socialisme (1968), Polen (1970) and Da jeg opdagede Amerika (1986)) written by a Danish graphic designer, writer and political activist Dea Trier Mørch (1941-2001). In focus of the text analysis is the question of poetological aspects, a.o. of the position of the three texts in relation to travel books as a genre and the narrative strategies, which are used by the author to represent the visited countries. As the analysis will reveal, Mørch (as author and protagonist) can be understood as a modern sentimental traveler - both in terms of the structure of her narratives and the existential dimension of her travels.
The subject of discussion in the present article are travel accounts of the nineteenth century given by two Franciscans, namely, Grgo Matić and Ivan Frano Jukić as a result of their visit in Bosnia. The image of the territory, reconstructed on the basis of their accounts, manifests itself as a devastated Arcadia. Bosnia turns out to be a country which may not be taken under rational consideration, since it is embroiled in absurdities and contradictions, streaked with poverty, but rich in all resources of nature. The visited country is perceived as a paradisiac place destroyed by its contemptible in habitants, who being dirty themselves, sully the whole space with their own impurity. It is a place where everything is out of place, which is transformed into a borderland, dominated by divisions, far from social and divine order. Presented as such, Bosnia, hortus horridus, becomes a sort of gothic garden in which, among beautiful, yet wild, nature and ruins imperfect and scared people live; their tainted women who transgress against the established roles, the oppressor (Ottoman Turks), a lazy local Muslim, and a member of the Orthodox Church who breaks out of the Illyrian common visions.
This article focuses on the accounts of climbing the particularly difficult West Wall of Changabang, a mountain in the Garhwal Himalaya, by a team of two British mountaineers: Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker. Close-reading of these non-fiction narratives is aimed at tracing the echoes of the best-known theories of the sublime developed by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, as well as the modern interpretation of the concept by Jean-François Lyotard. It appears that, though never explicitly referring to the sublime, Boardman’s and Tasker’s portrayals of their Changabang expedition not only contain some of its conventional elements, but also highlight the impossibility of representation and internal contradictions that are now emphasized as its important characteristic features. Based on Tsang Lap Chuen’s theory of the sublime, the article is an example of reclaiming the now mostly art-related concept so that it is more closely linked with real-life experience. In this way, mountain literature can be read as a reflection of the process at the origin of a cultural construct.
PL
Przedmiotem analizy są relacje ze wspinaczki wyjątkowo trudną Ścianą Zachodnią himalajskiej góry Changabang przez dwuosobową wyprawę brytyjską – Petera Boardmana i Joego Taskera. Szczegółowa analiza opisów autentycznych wydarzeń pozwala odnaleźć elementy zarówno najbardziej znanych teorii wzniołości (sublime) sformułowanych przez Edmunda Burke’a oraz Immanuela Kanta, jak i współczesnej interpretacji tego pojęcia przez Jean-François Lyotarda. Choć sama koncepcja wzniosłości nie jest bezpośrednio przywoływana przez Boardmana i Taskera, ich relacje z wyprawy na Lśniącą Górę zawierają odniesienia do poszczególnych konwencjonalnych motywów, a także uwypuklają niemożność pełnego odzwierciedlenia przeżyć oraz wewnętrzne sprzeczności Bazując na teorii wzniosłości zaproponowanej przez Tsanga Lap Chuena podjęto próbę odzyskania pojęcia wzniosłości, używanego obecnie głównie w kontekście sztuki, na potrzeby opisu autentycznych doświadczeń i przeżyć. W tym ujęciu literaturę górską można interpretować jako odwzorowanie procesu, który ukształtował sublime jako kulturową konstrukcję myślową.
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War represented a pivotal moment in Leonardo Sciascia’s ideological development, as it pushed him towards an anti-fascist passion that would make him an "engagé" writer over the years. In fact, the news of Lorca’s assassination and Ortega y Gasset’s volumes had a lasting influence on the writer: he began to read Spanish and about the Spanish world, thus discovering Spain and its language, literature, and culture. In fact, it was a rediscovery, since, in the eyes of the Sicilian author, the common Arab domination and the long Spanish hegemony in Sicily had already connected the island and the peninsula in an intricate web of “similarities.” The present article aims to examine the distinctness of Sciascia’s Sicilian-Spanish imaginary that is present in the reports that he published after his numerous trips to the Iberian land starting in the 1950s. After having often been dismissed as paraliterary, those works will be analysed as travel writing so as to better appreciate them. "Ore di Spagna", the volume that collects most of those journalistic articles, will be considered as one of the best examples of reporting in the 20 th century, far beyond the boundaries of essay production.
IT
Lo scoppio della Guerra civile spagnola rappresentò un momento decisivo per la maturazione ideologica di Leonardo Sciascia, in quanto le sue vicende lo spinsero verso quella passione antifascista che nel tempo lo avrebbe reso uno scrittore "engagé". Tuttavia, dal triennio rivoluzionario arrivarono anche le notizie dell’assassinio di Lorca, i volumi di Ortega y Gasset – su cui Sciascia iniziò a leggere il "castellano", e poi il mondo –, dunque la scoperta della Spagna, della sua lingua, della sua letteratura e della sua cultura. In realtà, si sarebbe trattato di una riscoperta, poiché, agli occhi dell’autore, la comune dominazione araba e la lunga egemonia spagnola in Sicilia avevano già saldato l’isola alla penisola in un intricato intreccio di “somiglianze”. Il presente studio intende esaminare le peculiarità di questo immaginario siculo-spagnolo attraverso una presentazione dei reportage pubblicati da Sciascia a seguito dei numerosi viaggi intrapresi in terra iberica a partire dagli anni Cinquanta. Trattandosi di pagine spesso allontanate dal genere che meglio può valorizzarle, si procederà, infine, a una loro valutazione in chiave odeporica e si stabilirà che "Ore di Spagna", il volume che raccoglie la maggior parte di quei pezzi giornalistici, può superare i confini del compendio saggistico nella direzione dei migliori esiti reportistici novecenteschi.
Modern travel literature is the research material used in the article, and particularly how it represents a particular vision of multiculturalism. One can make use of contemporary travel reports as an example of nowadays very popular branch of literature relating to other cultures, thereby confirming the consequential status of multiculturalism as a socio-cultural aspect. As the methodological basis of the work, modern literary and cultural onomastics, and onomastics of discourse have been selected. Discourse is understood as a communication phenomenon of a higher level, concentrating various components and not only verbal ones. Furthermore, it is motivated by social, ideological, and cultural factors which are manifested in different forms. The crucial methodological context is the adoption of discourse linguistics as an extensive research program that can help to create the additional context of the proper names observed in travel literature. The aim of the work is to highlight the main discourse strategies concerning the multiculturalism aspects of proper names present in modern travel literature. Three primary strategies were identified i.e. assimilation, exoticisation and neutralisation. Depending on the strategy adopted, the proper name relates to the ideological level of discourse to a varying degree, it also profiles the Known–Other/Strange relation, approximates given cultures or reflects their disparateness. As one can see, the research has identified many different points of liaison between proper names and the ideology of the text and, what is more, the creation of the world in a chosen discourse. Moreover, it confirms the thesis that proper names, analyzed on the discourse level, requires a context approach revealing its whole semantic and functional potential in microtext as well as macrotext.
The picture of Poland and Poles painted by the hand of Georg Forster, botanist and traveller staying in Vilnius between 1784 and 1787, has been covered with a thick layer of varnish by successive generations of historians. It decayed, darkened, and lost its transparency, making it impossible to see the details of the composition. The author tries to pull back this veil by analysing Forster’s correspondence from his stay in the Commonwealth against the broad background of the late eighteenth-century literary phenomena. He also undertakes a polemic against the myth of Forster as an objective observer and cosmopolitan.
PL
Obraz Polski i Polaków malowany ręką Georga Forstera, botanika i podróżnika, bawiącego w latach 1784–1787 w Wilnie, kolejne pokolenia historyków pokryły grubą warstwą werniksu. Zżółkł on, ściemniał i stracił przezroczystość, nie pozwalając dostrzec detali kompozycji. Analizując Forsteriańską korespondencję z okresu pobytu w Rzeczypospolitej na szerokim tle literackich zjawisk końca XVIII w., autor stara się tę zasłonę odsunąć. Podejmuje także polemikę z mitem Forstera jako obiektywnego obserwatora i kosmopolity.
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