LE DANUBE VU PAR UN FRANÇAIS
THE DANUBE IN THE EYE OF A FRENCHMAN

Summary/Abstract: The Danube, the oldest European traveller, is the only major river to flow from West to East and pass through ten countries. This river has been the source of inspiration for many artists: writers, painters, poets, travellers-writers. Our intention is to study how an artist-writer-traveller in the nineteenth century, Dieudonné Auguste Lancelot, travelling in the Balkans along the Danube, and impressed by this river and the fortress towns on its shores, notes and represents with words and images what has particularly attracted his attention. He presents a whole range of historical, geographical, ethnographic facts with the aim of popularizing other cultures. In Lancelot’s narrative, following the current of the Danube, we study particularly two aspects of the Danube: the cities-fortresses on its shores, and the possibilities of trade and tourism in relation with the opening of the Danube for free navigation and commerce.

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