Kulturni i jezični identitet Bosne i Hercegovine u Baedekerovu vodiču Austria-Hungary: With excursions to Cetinje, Belgrade, and Bucharest; handbook for travelers iz 1911. godine
Cultural and Linguistic Identity of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Baedeker Travel Handbook Austria-Hungary: With Excursions to Cetinje, Belgrade, and Bucharest; Handbook for Travelers from 1911

Summary/Abstract: Although it has been ubiquitous for as many as two hundred years, a travel handbook, a mass product of popular culture, has been neglected in scientific research. This paper analyses the presentation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Karl Baedeker travel handbook through Austria from 1911. Karl Baedeker was a publisher renowned for his tourist guidebooks. He not only established the standards of the genre which still apply today, but it also became a metonymic expression for this text type. After the occupation in 1878., Austro-Hungary established the civil and military control over Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although it formally remained under the sultan up until the annexation in 1908, Bosnia and Hercegovina had been included in the Baedeker guidebooks to Austria since the occupation. In the guidebook from 1911 which totals six hundred pages, it is described on thirty, whereby a third of them account for maps. The beginning is typical of the genre and includes general information about the country, a brief historical overview, a list of inns, some practical advice and a dictionary of basic expressions. An eight-day itinerary is provided, and recommended books on Bosnia and Hercegovina are listed. The cities that are described are Sarajevo, Mostar, Višegrad, Banja Luka, Jajce and Travnik. Tourist guidebooks are a genre which allows the promotion of identity, culture and language of a country, and the perception of these does not necessarily coincide when the domestic and foreign authors are in question. The aim of this paper is to show how the Baedeker guidebook perceived the cultural identity and the language of Bosnia and Hercegovina. This complex country when history, politics and identity are in question is depicted as an exotic destination of beautiful nature where west and east meet whereby its linguistic and cultural identity is presented in a simplified and superficial way.

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