VOYAGE HISTORIQUE ET POLITIQUE AU MONTÉNÉGRO DE VIALLA DE SOMMIÈRES: UN LIVRE FONDATEUR D’UN IMAGINAIRE PARADOXAL DU VOYAGE AU MONTÉNÉGRO AU XIX SIÈCLE
HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL JOURNEY TO MONTENEGRO BY VIALLA DE SOMMIERES FOUNDING BOOK OF A PARADOXICAL IMAGINARY OF A JOURNEY TO MONTENEGRO

Summary/Abstract: In 1820, Vialla de Sommières published in Paris his book Historical and political journey to Montenegro. He was Commander of the Second division of Illyrian army in Ragusa from 1812 to 1813. Later, this work was used by many 19th century French travel writers as a model source for their own observations on Montenegro. Naturally, travelling to an unknown country implies an element of discovery. By analysing de Sommières’s text and the works by other French travel writers (P. Loti, X. Marmier, H. Avelot, J. de la Nézière, F. Lenorment, Ch. Yriarte, M. Sermet, l’abbé P. Bauron) we have been able to situate descriptions of journeys to and throughout Montenegro, which express an effect of surprise or discovery, and we have classified our findings in four sections: difficult access to astonishing landscapes, the cult of freedom, the character of Montenegrins, and the position of women. Thus, a journey to Montenegro becomes a kind of a return to a distant, precarious and, even, timeless epoch. In this sense, Vialla de Sommières’s work constitutes a founding work of a paradoxical imaginary of a journey to Montenegro, as the analysis of this travel story proposes.

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