CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Stanton, Kyle Daniel |
|---|---|
| Title | Between Comedy and Tragedy: From Imaginary Travelers to Temporarily Settled in Moldova |
| Summary | The aim of this thesis is to examine what travelers determine as 'otherness' when traveling in post-Soviet Moldova. It is my central argument that the travel narratives of contemporary Moldova serve to portray the country either in a comedic or tragic light. It is in doing so that authors of travelogues risk turning the country into a farcical spectacle that reinforces certain stereotypes of their respective home audiences. In this thesis I invert the view of travel writing, a genre which is supposed to unravel a foreign culture and I attempt to unravel the travel writer and the home audience. Keeping the longue durée of stereotypes of Eastern Europe in mind, I take various travelogues on Bessarabia, Moldavia, and then finally Moldova to see how the view of the country has temporally changed but also to see some aspects which have surprisingly stayed similar. It is my contention that the era of communism in Eastern Europe has added a further dimension to the stereotyping of the “East”. |
| Supervisor | Iordachi, Constantin |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/stanton_kyle.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2025, Central European University