The research investigates English and American travel accounts on Hungary and Transylvania during the nineteenth century. It aims at establishing an inventory of, and discussing the most prestigious travelogues of the time, such as the texts of John Paget, Archibald Andrew Paton, John Arthur Patterson and Charles Loring Brace. Moreover, the project also attempts to create a database that would structure the information in the aforementioned travelogues according to cities and regions.
It is also our goal to provide an analysis of the ways in which Hungary and Transylvania were seen and depicted by Anglo-Saxon travellers, while we also attempt to offer an insight into nineteenth-century Hungarian society and culture as contrasted to Western European culture and politics. Our purpose is not only to provide a general presentation of the English and American travellers’ journals, but also to discuss these texts against theories of travel literature as well as studies in imagology.
The travel writings that are analyzed in this project are the following:
John Paget: Hungary and Transylvania (1839)
Archibald Andrew Paton: The Goth and the Hun; or, Transylvania, Debreczin, Pesth and Vienna, in 1850
Charles Loring Brace: Hungary in 1851: with an Experience of the Austrian Police
Arthur J. Patterson: The Magyars (1869)