Europe and/or Orient. British Travel Literature and the Recognition of Cultural Confluences in Inter-war Romania
Europe and/or Orient. British Travel Literature and the Recognition of Cultural Confluences in Inter-war Romania

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the present study is to analyze the representations about Inter-War Romania, with special attention to the period 1930-1939 and King Carol’s reign, in British travel literature. In what this period is concerned, even if it was still represented by the British visitors in a ambiguous way either as a modern European country, somewhere between the West and the East or as a South-Eastern or Balkan country, somewhere between Europe and the Orient, this liminal condition is no longer the object of criticism and irony for those British visitors who have an agenda: to please their royal and noble hosts, travellers like D. J. Hall (1933), Romanian Furrow, Sacheverell Sitwell (1938), Romanian Journey, R. H. Bruce Lockhart (1938), Guns or Butter. War Countries and Peace Countries of Europe Revisited, Archibald Forman (1939), Rumania through a Windscreen, Derek Patmore (1939), Invitation to Romania. One of the main characteristics of this period as reflected in British literature is that the oscillation between the Eastern/Oriental and Western models is pointing out this time the progress of modern Romania and its European life standards. Another common place is the relationship between gender and national identification.

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