Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: A Transnational Literary Field in the Age of Nationalism
- 1 The Passion of Johannes Scherr: Historiography as Trauma
- 2 Between Integration and Differentiation: On the Relationship between German and Austrian Literature in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
- 3 Reading Stifter in America
- 4 Travel Writing and Transnational Marketing: How Ida Pfeiffer brought the World to Austria and Beyond
- 5 Ernst Brausewetter's Meisternovellen Deutscher Frauen (1897–98): Gender, Genre, and (Inter)National Aspiration
- 6 Arbiter of Nation? The Strange Case of Hans Müller-Casenov's The Humour of Germany (1892/1893)
- 7 Visualizing the End: Nation, Empire, and Neo-Roman Mimesis in Keller and Fontane
- 8 Eurocentric Cosmopolitanism in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks
- 9 European Peace from a Transatlantic Perspective: Victor Hugo and Bertha von Suttner
- 10 Hermann Graf Keyserling and Gu Hongming’s Ethics of World Culture: Confucianism, Monarchism, and Anti-Colonialism
- 11 Constructing Symphonic Worlds: Gustav Mahler, Weltliteratur, and the Musical Program
- 12 The Garb of National Literature: Transnational Identities and the Early Twentieth-Century Schriftstreit
- 13 From European Symbolism to German Gesture: The International and Transnational Nationalism of Stefan George's Blätter für die Kunst
- 14 Canon Fire: Dada's Attack on National Literature
- Selected Bibliography
- Contributors
- Index
4 - Travel Writing and Transnational Marketing: How Ida Pfeiffer brought the World to Austria and Beyond
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: A Transnational Literary Field in the Age of Nationalism
- 1 The Passion of Johannes Scherr: Historiography as Trauma
- 2 Between Integration and Differentiation: On the Relationship between German and Austrian Literature in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
- 3 Reading Stifter in America
- 4 Travel Writing and Transnational Marketing: How Ida Pfeiffer brought the World to Austria and Beyond
- 5 Ernst Brausewetter's Meisternovellen Deutscher Frauen (1897–98): Gender, Genre, and (Inter)National Aspiration
- 6 Arbiter of Nation? The Strange Case of Hans Müller-Casenov's The Humour of Germany (1892/1893)
- 7 Visualizing the End: Nation, Empire, and Neo-Roman Mimesis in Keller and Fontane
- 8 Eurocentric Cosmopolitanism in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks
- 9 European Peace from a Transatlantic Perspective: Victor Hugo and Bertha von Suttner
- 10 Hermann Graf Keyserling and Gu Hongming’s Ethics of World Culture: Confucianism, Monarchism, and Anti-Colonialism
- 11 Constructing Symphonic Worlds: Gustav Mahler, Weltliteratur, and the Musical Program
- 12 The Garb of National Literature: Transnational Identities and the Early Twentieth-Century Schriftstreit
- 13 From European Symbolism to German Gesture: The International and Transnational Nationalism of Stefan George's Blätter für die Kunst
- 14 Canon Fire: Dada's Attack on National Literature
- Selected Bibliography
- Contributors
- Index
Summary
… they came flocking from all sides to see me, for such an astonishing spectacle as a white woman had never yet been witnessed in their country.
—Ida Pfeiffer, A Lady's Second Voyage Round the WorldWhen Madame Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world … had got so near home … she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, … for she “was now in a civilized country, where—people are judged of by their clothes.”
—Henry D. Thoreau, WaldenUnderstanding the diverse ways in which national literature was framed and shaped by transnational forces challenges us to re-examine our view of the long nineteenth century. Such re-examination is also productive for cultural documents, such as travel writing, that we might have already considered to be obviously transnational. Of course, travel writing is predicated on crossing borders, both in the person of the author as traveler and in terms of opening up vistas for readers who themselves are not traveling. Yet, even here, a closer look can uncover additional transnational connections. A re-examination of an example of popular German-language travel writing from that era can productively complicate traditional conceptions of national distinctiveness and interest.
It is perhaps ironic that the period of heightened interest in German national cohesiveness went hand in hand with a fascination about the rest of the world. At the same time that the middle classes in the German states were clamoring for German unification, the amount of travel writing distributed by major German publishing houses was steadily increasing. The illustrated press also participated actively in promoting readers’ interest in events and cultures outside of the German nation. Scholars such as Susanne Zantop and Russell Berman have compellingly linked this phenomenon to colonial aspirations that preceded and anticipated the German Empire joining the European race for colonial territories. While it is clear that fantasies of colonial grandiosity played a role in the German interest in travel writing, they were not limited to that national context. In fact, they were easily exportable; well-written German travel reports were often translated and published in England.
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- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2023