| Abstract [eng] |
The subject of this final thesis – "The Image of Vilnius in Therese Huber's Travel Journals." The relevance of the topic arises from the fact that there are not many texts on Vilnius in the 16th-18th centuries, yet Huber's texts, which provide a detailed portrayal of Vilnius in Old German, are not known and have not been analysed by anyone until now in Lithuania. This work significantly contributes to German studies in Lithuania, considering that foreign scholars rarely explore the heritage of German literature and culture in Lithuania. In the travel journals chosen for analysis dominates the writer's innovative approach to Vilnius at that time and, therefore contain aspects of the image of Vilnius that are either completely absent or only partially described in the texts of other German authors of a similar period. It is worth emphasising that the study is based on a synergy of imagology and Bernhard Waldenfels' phenomenology of the alien, which is seldom found in other scholars' works. The purpose of the thesis is to determine the image of Vilnius in literature, using Huber's travel journals of the late 18th century as an example, to reveal the author's relation to the foreign city on the basis of Waldenfels' phenomenology of the alien and to demonstrate how closely the theory of imagology can be applied in conjunction with the phenomenology of the alien. The main tasks of the work are: to introduce the historical, cultural, political and social context of Vilnius in the 18th century; to overview texts of other German authors about Vilnius; to present the theory of imagology; to define the concept of the alienness and to give explanations of its forms; to depict scenes of Vilnius in Huber's travel journals and to analyse them on the basis of Daniel-Henri Pageaux's attitudes towards the other culture (mania, phobia, philia, idiocrasy), and to describe the forms of alienation with which Huber encountered in Vilnius. Aspects of the image of Vilnius found in the travel journals are grouped into imageries and analysed by applying imagology as a method, hermeneutics as a tool of method and Waldenfels' phenomenology of the alien. The study revealed that the image of Vilnius in Huber's texts is multifaceted, although frequently negative, yet encompassing all Pageaux's identified attitudes. The analysis also proves the writer's particular attention to detailed descriptions as well as the originality and depth of her insights in comparison to other authors' texts. In Huber's travel journals, it is often observed that her encounters with various types of alienness correlate with her attitudes towards a particular aspect of Vilnius. Finally, the analysis provides not only a new perspective on the image of Vilnius created in the literature to this date, but also potentially new knowledge about the city and its inhabitants, which may be of interest to historians and scholars in other disciplines for further research. |
