Through Imperial Eyes: Women, Travel Writing, and the “Orient” in Late-Imperial Austria-Hungary
Through Imperial Eyes: Women, Travel Writing, and the “Orient” in Late-Imperial Austria-Hungary

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyses the travel writing of Austrian authors Mara Čop Marlet and Kornelia Kardos about the “Orient” in the context of Austro-Hungarian Orientalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The aim was to explore how the authors, operating within a gender-bounded cultural system and under the influence of powerful imperial discourses, shape their own identity through the representation of the “Other” and negotiate between emancipation and belonging to the imperial order. The methodological approach combines feminist and postcolonial analysis, with an emphasis on the genre specificity of the feuilleton as a space for female self-affirmation. The research results show that both authors use Orientalist tropes to articulate the authorial voice within discursive power structures, partly destabilizing and reshaping these discourses from within.

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