TSAR, EAST, AND CIVILIZATION: RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN EDNA DEAN PROCTOR’S TRAVELOGUE
TSAR, EAST, AND CIVILIZATION: RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN EDNA DEAN PROCTOR’S TRAVELOGUE

Summary/Abstract: American writer Edna Dean Proctor (1829-1923), known as a poet and a progressive social activist, published her travelogue back in 1871, hot on the trail of her extensive tour of the countries of Western Europe and the Holy Land, including the Russian Empire. A Russian Journey was reprinted in America several times, and by the 1890 reprint, which has served as the material for this paper. The purpose of the study is to reveal the peculiarities of the image of Russia in the female traveler vision, which was created at the intersection of several discourse fields, Russian and Oriental, European and Eastern. The analysis of the author's creative thinking is based on a culturological perusal, which makes it possible to identify symbolic and mythopoetic codes of construction of a “borderline” mentality, as well as on a gender-adjusted post-colonial approach, exposing the clash of colonial and anti-colonial ideas. The research demonstrates, that European codes do not play a meaning-forming role, as well as the truly Russian ones; instead, the Eastern codes are revealed to the fullest possible extent. The attempts to fit the development of the empire into the Western discourse leads to emergence of semantic shifts and dichotomy of Oriental and European concepts.

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