<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Julia Pardoe, an English poet and historian, was among the first travel writers who described Hungary’s institutions and contributed to the shaping up of the nineteenth-century British image of Hungary In her book <italic>The City of the Magyar or Hungary and Her Institutions</italic> (1840), she thoroughly reported her experiences and observations regarding a country that, although being part of East-Central Europe, had not stirred the interest of the British public Pardoe’s narrative contravenes the patriarchal ideology of travel writing as well as the act of travelling per se as masculine preoccupations, while, in my view, it seeks to negotiate the gender norms of her age by adopting an equally acceptable colonialist perspective as well as a conventionally feminine, a gentlewoman’s narrative perspective on the page By making use of Andrew Hammond’s theory of “imagined colonialism,” I shall demonstrate that Pardoe’s text can be interpreted as a negotiation between the conflicting demands of the discourse of female travel writing and of colonialism In discussing Pardoe’s travel account, I am also interested in the (rhetoric) ways in which the female traveller formulates her observations on Hungarian landscapes, people, and culture as civilized or less civilized – according to her own British national ideals and class norms Pardoe’s portrayal of Hungarian otherness served to raise the curiosity as well as the sympathy of the British towards a nation that was in need of and ready for progress/reform in the years before the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 <sup>1</sup></p>
</abstract>

Julia Pardoe, an English poet and historian, was among the first travel writers who described Hungary’s institutions and contributed to the shaping up of the nineteenth-century British image of Hungary In her book The City of the Magyar or Hungary and Her Institutions (1840), she thoroughly reported her experiences and observations regarding a country that, although being part of East-Central Europe, had not stirred the interest of the British public Pardoe’s narrative contravenes the patriarchal ideology of travel writing as well as the act of travelling per se as masculine preoccupations, while, in my view, it seeks to negotiate the gender norms of her age by adopting an equally acceptable colonialist perspective as well as a conventionally feminine, a gentlewoman’s narrative perspective on the page By making use of Andrew Hammond’s theory of “imagined colonialism,” I shall demonstrate that Pardoe’s text can be interpreted as a negotiation between the conflicting demands of the discourse of female travel writing and of colonialism In discussing Pardoe’s travel account, I am also interested in the (rhetoric) ways in which the female traveller formulates her observations on Hungarian landscapes, people, and culture as civilized or less civilized – according to her own British national ideals and class norms Pardoe’s portrayal of Hungarian otherness served to raise the curiosity as well as the sympathy of the British towards a nation that was in need of and ready for progress/reform in the years before the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 1

“The City of the Magyar:” On Julia Pardoe’s Travel Writing

Department of English Language and Literature

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"\u201cThe City of the Magyar:\u201d On Julia Pardoe\u2019s Travel Writing"}

Julia Pardoe, an English poet and historian, was among the first travel writers who described Hungary’s institutions and contributed to the shaping up of the...

“The City of the Magyar:” On Julia Pardoe’s Travel Writing

Publié en ligne: 20 déc. 2022

Pages: 1 - 13

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2022-0001

Mots clés
travel writing, Julia Pardoe, Hungary in the nineteenth century, imagology

© 2022 Borbála Bökös, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

“The City of the Magyar:” On Julia Pardoe’s Travel Writing

Publié en ligne: 20 déc. 2022

Pages: 1 - 13

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2022-0001

Mots cléstravel writing, Julia Pardoe, Hungary in the nineteenth century, imagology

© 2022 Borbála Bökös, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Mots clés
travel writing, Julia Pardoe, Hungary in the nineteenth century, imagology