Travelling Between Metaphors: British Representations Of Bucharest At The Crossing Of The 19th And 20th Centuries
Travelling Between Metaphors: British Representations Of Bucharest At The Crossing Of The 19th And 20th Centuries

Summary/Abstract: The paper continues my previous research on Bucharest’s life and civilization reflected in British travel literature. The intention of the present analysis is to demonstrate the inclusion of stereotypes in cultural metaphors and their evolution from one observer to another. In this case, the study focuses on the representations of Bucharest in British travel literature at the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. For this purpose, I have chosen as reference Florence Berger’s travel account A Winter in the City of Pleasure, or Life on the Lower Danube, published in 1877, continuing with James Samuelson’s Roumania Past and Present, published in 1882, and then with British travellers who visited Bucharest during the first decades of the 20th century. The conclusion is that, contrary to Florence Berger’s metaphorical labelling, the other travellers were stressing Bucharest’s Oriental or, sometimes Byzantine, setting, in order to underline its inherited features and make the present comprehensible, not to emphasize its primitive character. This image occurred due to the past of the city, which is embedded in its psychology, mentalities and appearance, like any city in the world. In fact, these old characteristics are perceived as very picturesque and interesting.

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