17. századi magyar utazók nyugaton és keleten

Absztrakt

The survey discusses the identity and self-image of 17th century Hungarian and Transylvanian travellers as conveyed through their travel texts. The cultural borders in the mental map of the travellers coincided with the Eastern and Southeastern borders of Transylvania. The authors placed themselves in the same position as their Western European contemporaries: although the general tone in their diaries was that of admiration, they did not make explicit comparisons to the disadvantage of their home. There are also some cases of criticism on civilisational basis towards the West, which shows, that the travellers felt that they stayed on equal grounds with the West. The few cases of auto-stereotypes also show that some travellers tended to reinforce even the negative stereotypes attributed to Hungarians, in order to question the Western discourse which placed them on a lower grade on a civilisational scale. Towards the Eastern neighbours, the travellers tended to use a condescending tone, qualities such as boorishness, lack of education and barbarity were attributed to Russians, Wallachians and Moldavians. The worst reputation was the share of the Ottomans: in their case, even if – in a very few cases – tolerance and understanding came into picture, there was no possibility of acceptance. Hungarian travellers only used the discourse of their own inferiority towards Western Europeans, when it was a part of their political agenda: otherwise, they included themselves into the concept of the region, imagined on the basis of erudition and Latin education, which they more and more often called Europe.