DANUBE ISLANDS AS LITERARY TOPOS
DANUBE ISLANDS AS LITERARY TOPOS

Summary/Abstract: The island Ada-Kaleh which was named Carolina during the Habsburgic occupation represented a sterling ethnic crucible made out or Turkish, Hungarians, Serbs, Romanians or Jewish. It experienced a lenient political attitude from the governors. In the beginning, it was an old roman castrum from where it takes the aspect of a fortress. Further, from its strategic position on the Danube, it became the bone of contention between two empires, switching many times from Turkish to Austrians. The Empire of the Crescent Moon defeated over from endless wars it cedes on behalf of the Habsurgic Empire which ruled the island until 1919, when, following the Treaty of Versailles, it becomes part of Romania. The life of the inhabitants left in a territory devoid of natural resources, at the hand of the European ships which navigated the Danube in the 19th century, formed a unique tableau, a mix of exoticism and drama. The tableau is preserved either as a fictional literary form - prose or as travelling literature, memoirs or literary journalism.

• Details
• Contents