DE BRUXELLES À CONSTANTINOPLE DE RENÉ SPITAELS; UNE VISION FLAMANDE DE LA GRÈCE MODERNE DANS LES ANNÉES (1836-1837)
DE BRUXELLES À CONSTANTINOPLE OF RENE SPITAELS; A FLEMISH VISION OF THE MODERN GREECE DURING THE YEARS (1836-1937)

Summary/Abstract: «De Bruxelles à Constantinople» is placed into travel literature in the East in the nineteenth century. The interest of the current article is focused on the representation of Modern Greece realized by a Flemish author, regarding travel narratives in the French language after the foundation of the Greek nation in 1830. Within his travel journal, Spitaels offers to us a romantic and sentimental approach of modern Greece, imitating most of his contemporary travelers. Once his classic, idealized image is contradicted to reality, the author manifests a great deception into his impressions of travel. However, his personal vision on graecity looks interesting as far as it is enriched with his personal political experiences and his perspicacious judgement. In fact, his audacious discourse turns out to be very caustic vis-à-vis the diplomatic European role in the Greek affair. Despite his initial intention to take an objective stance to the modern Greeks avoiding the false impressions, the author often compares modern Greece with ancient Greece of his child readings and he doesn’t succeed in dissimulating his sense of intense strangeness facing the different culture of the “Other”.

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