Imagology

This paper discusses the Crimean episode of famous Memoires of Prince Charles de Ligne, who visited the peninsula in 1787. This book contributed to the shaping of the Crimean image in West European thought. Particularly, it interpreted the Crimea as a pure Orient, a romantic and beautiful place resembling Arabian and Persian tales.

Smoking Habits in Constantinople during the 19th century:
Evidence from the Greek “City Mystery” Novel

In our study we examine the image of tobacco and smoking, as depicted
in eight Greek novels in the form of "Apocrypha" (City Mysteries),
which were published in Constantinople during 1855-1897. Within the
context of the realistic portrayal of the Greek Orthodox community of
Constantinople, numerous versions of the enjoyable habit of smoking,
which is still popular with the oriental society of the Ottoman capital,
are recorded. Each type of smoking doesn’t account for the whole social
pyramid; on the contrary, it reveals the social class of each smoker. Heavy smokers are male novel characters who come from different social classes whereas women, who are socially excluded and of loose morals, smoke rarely.

The aim of the article is an attempt to reconstruct a description of the image of Arab World on the basis of selected (yet representative) writings from the second half of the 18th century. In that period, due to the trending Enlightenment orientalism understood as a fascination with the Orient and references made to it in the culture, the Arab world appeared among Polish representatives of the Age of Reason. These trends were expressed in art, customs, literature and-in the form of various concepts and images-in social consciousness. These images differed between each other both in terms of content and form. Some of them aimed to depict the Arab world objectively and extensively, whereas the other, on the contrary, were merely delineations focused on particular elements of the Arab world, depicting only one or a few aspects. Some of them, such as the image of Arabia Felix or utopian reminiscences refer to the tradition and update it. Some of them were created for the time being. Nevertheless, each of them reflects the topics, problems and questions which concerned the minds in Enlightenment Poland. Moreover, relatively high correlation between European archetypes and the image of the Arab world which occurs in the writings of the Polish Enlightenment confirms that Poland belongs to the Old Continent cultural group, which was crucial for the promoters of Polish Enlightenment.

This article advances a four-fold contribution to theorizing the relationship between images, religion, and the Anthropocene. First, it proposes a ‘process-semiotic’ definition of the image as a sensorially perceptible form that mediates agential relations both between humans and between humans and the larger world. Second, it argues for a conception of religion and of spirituality that sees the world as varying on a scale between the ‘polytropic’ and the ‘monotropic’, where ‘tropism’ refers to the ‘turning’ toward sources of sustenance, relief, hope, authority, and the like. This turning is commonly, if not universally, accomplished with the aid of images. Bringing these ideas together, it then advances a typology of ‘image regimes’, each of which establishes relationships between understandings of images and of reality, relationships which can be traced across diverse religious and cultural contexts. Finally, it proposes a set of questions by which to bring ecocritical analysis to expressions of these image regimes in the emerging ‘image-world’ of digital culture, a culture that is coterminous, if not causally linked with, the growing recognition of the Anthropocene. It ends with a brief application of these questions to the Anthropocene Project, an art exhibition, film, and book project by Edward Burtunsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and Nicholas De Pencier.

This doctoral thesis aims to analyse women’s images in the weekly newspaper A Paródia (1900-1905) by Rafael and Manuel Gustavo Bordalo Pinheiro, with emphasis on the irony that spreads through the entire graphic work of Bordalo. With this purpose in mind, we proceeded to the division of the thesis in three chapters.In  the  first  one,  we  characterize  our  object  of  study:  concepts  of  satirical journalism, the  integration of  the  caricature as a literary genre,  the  characteristics  of satirical news  and  some  concepts of  graphic  satire. We analyse this newspaper  in  the history of journalism and of satirical journalism until the time it was published, referring to some foreign examples, like French, Brazilian and North American. Finally, we refer to the biography of its main creators.In  the  second  chapter,  we  contextualize  the period in  question,  politically, artistically and in terms of women's history. Finally, we mention the role that the press plays in construction of gender. In  the  third  chapter,  we  consider  the  tools  that  will  allow  us  to develop the analysis: iconology, visual literacy and what can be called the caricature's specific code. In order to understand it weneed to consider the contributions of the General Theory of Verbal Humor as  well  as humorous  speech  analysis. The  humorous  act according  to Charaudeau  involves linguistic and  discursive procedures  and  has  its own effects of connivance. After considering the importance of Imagology, we analyse the stereotypes of foreign actresses, as well as the images of other women represented in the newspaper, we refer to the condition of the stereotypes detected and which were determinant to reduce the role of women at the time, and finally we analyse female stereotypes representation of male characters, which  can be called the travestisms that were so frequent in Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro.

Due rappresentanti della cultura italiana in viaggio in Finlandia negli anni ’30 del secolo scorso riflettono sull’immagine del Paese nordico. La loro narrazione introduce il pubblico italiano in un ambiente esotico, del quale vengono evidenziati aspetti relativi non solo alla quotidianità, ma anche alla storia, all’economia, alla struttura sociale. Utilizzando uno stesso strumento, la scrittura, le due donne realizzano due testi molto diversi fra loro, ricchi di elementi soggettivi e di osservazioni singolari.

Questo articolo presenta i resoconti di viaggio delle prime italiane che hanno visitato la Scandinavia fra il XIX e il XX secolo, partendo da una nazione giovane, in cui le donne erano ben lontane dall’emancipazione. La loro posizione sociale influenza il loro rapporto con la scrittura, in maniera particolarmente evidente nella caratterizzazione delle figure maschili, che varia dalla semplice presenza fisica all’interpretazione di ruoli cruciali, fino alla sostituzione dell’io narrante dell’autrice.

Nel 1924 l'autrice, reduce  da  dolorose  esperienze  personali, parte  alla  volta  della Norvegia per un'esplorazione  solitaria. Attraversa il paese senza un itinerario preciso, alla  scoperta di insolite  corrispondenze  fra  la  propria personalità e la  natura del nord.

Women occupy a tiny place in the tradition of Italian travel writing, otherwise rich in well known male records; their presence is highlighted only in recent studies and their existence is circumscribed to XIX-XX century travel literature.This chapter deals with two of the few Italian women who chose the Scandinavian countries as their destination at the turn of the twentieth century. Some of these women travelled on their own, others in small groups of tourists from different countries. Companionship assumed a varied relevance: men were always present, albeit mostly side figures; in some cases, though, they represented the narrative voice; at times the authors had to create male figures in order to fill an unbearable emptiness. Therefore, even if at first sight these women’s travelogues seem wholly self-referential, it becomes crucial to disclose their companions’ role, their relationship with the authors, and why they are necessary to these women’s journeys.

Despite the increasing interest in women’s travelogues, no study has so far focused on those written by Italian women about the Northern European area. This dissertation aims at filling up this gap with a comparative analysis of six reports, written by six different women who travelled the Nordic Countries between the end of the XIX and the first decades of the XX century. Besides retrieving these forgotten travelogues, this study concentrates on each author's gaze on the itinerary, expressed in a narrative that enables the readers to share both the authors’ emotional status and their frame of mind.
The dissertation situates the target authors both in their historical context, drawing the Italian background of the time, and in the frame of women’s traveling, relating the authors to the previous foreign women travellers in this same area.
An accurate synthesis of each travelogue allows to proceed to a comparative study among these travel books, based on their most relevant characteristics: the chosen itinerary, the encounters, the cultural impact of the target countries on each woman writer.
As the itineraries take place along the usual touristic routes of the time, the research is rather concerned on the writers’ emotional experience, first of all towards the places they visit and the atypical natural landscapes they encounter along the journey.
Thereafter the study analyses the authors’ thorough curiosity and deep interest towards the Other, either represented by casual encounters along the route, or seen as a category, as in the case of the Laplanders. A specific focus is devoted to Nordic women, whose social position and role, especially in the urban areas, arise the writers’ attention.
The last part of the corpus examines the attitude towards culture, either focused on everyday life or concerning the different aspects of Nordic folklore; cultural institutions are also described, as well as some historical, economical, and political features that the authors consider as relevant features for their reports. Eventually, a special attention is deserved to the travellers’ attitude towards their homeland, emotionally depicted and compared to the target Countries, with a nostalgia mixed to a sense of belonging and a feeling of cultural primacy.
The study places these forgotten travelogues into a more general hodoeporic perspective, with particular attention to Italian women’s writings, opening at the same time the path to a deeper analysis of each report and its author.

Giornalista e viaggiatrice, M.A. Loschi ha  visitato in diverse  occasioni la  Finlandia  negli anni tra le  due  guerre mondiali. Il suo sguardo  particolare  restituisce  al lettore l'immagine  di un paese sereno e  laborioso, immerso in una natura  inconsueta e affascinante, dove le  donne vivono una  situazione  di assoluta parità.

Around the end of the 19th century a small private steamer leaves from the coasts of Southern England and heads for Iceland. On board, in addition to the Captain, a small group of English travellers: three teenagers, who face this unique educational journey, the father of one of them, a governess. A Swedish Professor is later rescued from a shipwreck, and heads to Iceland together with the party.
This is the set of narrative voices that the author entrusts to report the journey in her work, Nei Paesi del Nord: each of them plays a fixed role and provides only a certain type of information, allowing the reader to pinpoint the various strands - historical, scientific, folkloristic etc. - through which a personal and choral narration proceeds. The image of Iceland is thus gradually built, like a puzzle that consists not only of cultural notions and personal sensations, but also of multiple, extraordinary events that are completely unpredictable both for the protagonists and for the readers.
The aim of this novel, written in the form of a travel report in a simple but precise Italian language, is undoubtedly to disseminate information regarding a remote part of the European continent among the widest possible audience of common readers. Besides the didactic value of this work, this study aims at underscoring the author's narrative technique: the protagonists’ narrative role allows the readers a thorough identification with the story.
The author, Maria Savi Lopez (Naples 1850 circa-1940), nowadays nearly forgotten, moved to Turin with her father, exiled from Neaples for political reasons. Here she developed an interest in local folklore, at the time passed down mainly orally. She was an ante litteram ethnologist and collaborator of the famous scholar Angelo De Gubernatis. A pioneer in field research, she collected the traditions and legends of the Alps in volumes, later expanding her repertoire with publications of different locations, from the Mediterranean to Northern European countries, to the ancient pre-Columbian civilizations. At present it is not possible to establish with certainty whether she actually embarked on a journey to Iceland, or she collected the information for his novel from encyclopedias and the few existing travelogues of her time.

The article aims to focus on the rhetoric of TV-series. Utopia, Homeland, and Occupied, are thus examined in their characterizing traits, being all constructed via the epistemic filter of a fear-eristics that often produces an oversimplified propaganda jargon linked to a racist imagology. How these digital, but ontologically guided, rhetorical strategies then work with populism is made clear in the essay.

Ahmet Davutoğlu ile yeni bir formata geçtiği ve “stratejik derinlik” yakaladığı iddia edilen Türk dış politikası mizah dergileri tarafından sıkça eleştirilmekte ve sorgulanmaktadır. Davutoğlu ile “sıfır sorun”, “köprü değil merkez”, “güçlü Türkiye”, “çok yönlü dış politika” ve “yeni Osmanlılar” gibi metaforlar ile donanan Türk dış politikasına mizah dergilerinin bakışı ve yaklaşımı dikkat çekicidir. Bu çalışma da bu noktadan hareketle en çok satan üç mizah dergisi: Uykusuz, Penguen ve Leman’ın kapakları üzerinden mizah dergilerinin AKP dönemi Türk dış politika yapıcılarının IŞİD politikası konusuna bakış açısını örnek olaylar
üzerinden inceleyecektir. Bu inceleme yapılırken yöntem olarak imge bilim ve söylem analizi uygulanacaktır.

Bu çalışmada Kosova güncel tarih ders kitaplarındaki Osmanlı/Türk imajı ile ilgilenilmektedir. İncelemede Kosova’da Arnavut öğrenciler için hazırlanmış olan ilk ve ortaöğretim kurumlarında 2010-2011 yılında zorunlu olarak okutulan güncel tarih ders kitapları incelenmiştir.
Devlet kurumları tarafından yazdırıldıkları için ülkelerin “resmi” tarihlerini anlatan ve zorunlu eğitim süreçleri nedeni ile bireylerin kimi zaman baştan sona okudukları ilk, kimi zamansa yegane kitaplar olan tarih ders kitapları eğitim bilimleri kapsamında pek çok araştırmaya konu olmuştur. Ancak bağımsızlığını yeni kazanmış bir devlet olan Kosova’nın tarih ders kitapları üzerine imgelerin arkalarında yatan kapalı olguları gün yüzüne çıkarmayı ve olumsuz, kasıtlı kalıp yargılara karşı farkındalık yaratmayı amaçlayan araştırmalar çok fazla bulunmamaktadır. Özellikle, Türkiye Milli Eğitim Bakanı Ömer Dinçer ve Dışişleri Bakanı Ahmet Davutoğlu’nun 2011 yılında Kosova’da tarih eğitimi ve Osmanlı algısı üzerine yaptığı konuşmalar ve bunun Kosova’daki yansıması sonucu ortaya çıkan tartışmalar böyle bir çalışmanın gerekliliğini ispatlar niteliktedir.
Kosova tarih ders kitapları da bütün bu tartışmalar ışığında, bu çalışma altında incelenmiş ve Osmanlı/Türk imgesi ile ilgili olumlu ve olumsuz imgeler ortaya konulmuştur. Çalışma boyunca dikkati çeken Osmanlı ve yönetim sistemi üzerine olan olumsuz nitelemelerdir. Osmanlı için “işgalci”, “terör uygulayan”, “çocukları rehin alan”, “despot”, “ortaçağ anlayışlı” gibi tanımlamalar kullanılmakta ve özellikle Osmanlı dönemi anlatılırken sürekli “işgal” ve “işgalci” vurgusu yüzlerce kez tekrarlanmaktadır. Osmanlı ve Sultan imajından sonra işlenen Türkiye ve Atatürk imajının verilen Osmanlı imajının tam tersi olduğu görülmektedir. Türkiye, diğer devletlerle “iyi geçinen” bir devlet olarak resmedilirken Atatürk de “vatansever”, “sultana karşı savaşan”, “iyi bir asker” ve “demokrat” olarak tanımlanmaktadır. Bu durum Türkiye ve Osmanlı’ya karşı bakış açısında farklılıklar olduğunu; Türkiye ve Osmanlı imgesinin tarih ders kitaplarında güncel politik duruma göre yorumlandığını göstermektedir.

    This work offers a study of the Ottoman/Turkish image in history textbooks in Kosovo. The unit of research is the compulsory textbooks prepared for the Albanian students in primary and middle-degree schools in Kosovo in the year 2010-2011.
    Textbooks, which usually are the first meeting of the individual with history, are a main subject in educational sciences due to the fact that they are the compulsory study units which  are designed by the states, reflection the “official” national histories. However, sufficient research has not been carried on the history textbooks in Kosovo. This study, which aims to shed light on the negative imageries in these books is inspired by the speeches made by the Turkish Education Minister Ömer Dinçer and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and following reflections and discussion in Kosovo in the year 2011.
    The history textbooks have been studied under the light of these discussions. The positive and negative images about the Ottoman/Turkish image are addressed in this study.The negative descriptions on the Ottoman administrative system were  one of the issues which required more attention. The descriptive words for the Ottoman rule were in example: occupier, terror, that which captures children and despotic. Especially, the emphasize on the concepts of the occupation and the occupier are very frequently used for the historical Ottoman era. On the contrary, he images related to the modern Turkey and Ataturk are very positive. Turkey is pictured as a friendly state while Atatürk is defined as a democrat patriot soldier who fights against the Ottoman Sultan. Consequently, this situation shows the difference between the points of view on the Ottoman Empire and Turkey and points that the images of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey are constructed due to the contemporary political situation.

This work offers a study of the Ottoman/Turkish imagery in history textbooks in Kosovo. The unit of research is the compulsory textbooks prepared for the Albanian students in primary and middle schools in Kosovo in the year 2010-2011. Textbooks, which usually are the first meeting of the individual with history, are a main subject in educational sciences due to the fact that they are the compulsory study units which are designed by the states, reflections of the "official" national histories. However, little research has been carried on the history textbooks in Kosovo. This study, which aims to shed light on the negative imageries in these books is inspired by the speeches made by the former Turkish Education Minister Ömer Dinçer and former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and following reflections and discussion in Kosovo in the year 2011. In this study, 5th Grade history textbook prepared for Kosovo Turks was also took into account for the comparison.History textbooks have been studied under the light of the aforementioned discussions. Positive and negative images of the Ottoman/Turkish image are addressed in this study. Negative descriptions of the Ottoman administrative system were one of the issues which required more attention. Such descriptive words as occupier, terror, captures children and despotic for the Ottoman rule were used.

Although being in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Albania has long been one of the less known European countries. In the view of other Europeans, this country which had remained for nearly five hundred years under Ottoman rule, was a mysterious outpost of Islam in the heart of Europe. It was only in the early 1800s which it began to be considered worthwhile to include among the Grand Tour destinations.
This research has been aimed at detecting and identifying representation patterns through which travellers, writers and European artists saw this country, its customs and its people, thereby shaping those who were to become the « images » by which Albania was conceived by foreigners. The sources range from early XIXth (when Albania entered the pantheon of European literature through Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage) to the 1940s. Starting from a primary corpus consisting of Souvenirs de la Haute-Albanie by the French consul Alexandre Degrand, L’Albania by the Italian writer and journalist Ugo Ojetti, and High Albania by the English Mary Edith Durham, whose innovative ethno-anthropological work has been subjected to a specific analysis, our observation field widened to include a broader survey of works ranging from diplomatic accounts to travel diaries, from fictional novels to newspaper articles.
Moreover, in the belief that, in the processus of creating the image of the Other, a prominent place belongs to the iconological corpus, a particular attention has been paid to the visual side of the literary works, namely to the engravings, sketches and other representational forms through which European literature illustrated Albanian subjects. Observing them has been a complementary tool for identifying the historical and conceptual framework in which the image of Albania took shape.
Finally, a specific study has been devoted to a rather particular case of representation, consisting of works taking place in fictional countries inspired by Albania. Written from the late XIXth century to the present day, they show a rather high concentration of clichés and stereotypes scattered throughout European literature, thus acting as a reactive test to detect some of the sources of the current image of Albania.
KEYWORDS: LORD BYRON, ALEXANDRE DEGRAND, MARY EDITH DURHAM, GEOCRITICISM, TRAVEL LITERATURE, UGO OJETTI
GEOGRAPHIC: ALBANIA, BALKANS, OTTOMAN EMPIRE
CHRONOLOGICAL: XIXTH CENTURY, XXTH CENTURY

«Οι Πομάκοι της Θράκης στο σύγχρονο ελληνικό μυθιστόρημα: Εικονολογική προσέγγιση», στο Μ. Γ. Βαρβούνης - Αντ. Μπαρτζιώκας - Ν. Μαχά-Μπιζούμη (επιμ.), Οι Πομάκοι της Θράκης. Πολυεπιστημονικές και διεπιστημονικές προσεγγίσεις, Δημοκρίτειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θράκης - Σχολή Κλασικών και Ανθρωπιστικών Σπουδών - Τμήμα Ιστορίας και Εθνολογίας - Εργαστήριο Λαογραφίας και Κοινωνικής Ανθρωπολογίας (Μελέτες Λαογραφίας και Κοινωνικής Ανθρωπολογίας 7) - Εκδοτικός Οίκος Κ. & Μ. Σταμούλη, Θεσσαλονίκη 2020, σσ. 461-482.

The Pomaks of Greek Thrace in the Modern Greek novel: An imagological approach

ABSTRACT

Our study is based on the theoretical principles of literary Imagology and examines the Pomaks as an image of the foreign element in the Modern Greek novel. The Pomaks are depicted as the minority Other who embraces a different cultural and religious code. The Muslim minority is not generally a major theme in Modern Greek Fiction. Only five novels are about the mountain-dwelling Pomaks: Κρυμμένοι Άνθρωποι (Hidden People) by Theodoros Grigoriadis (1990), Μελέκ θα πει άγγελος (Melek means angel) by Ifigenia Theodorou (2001), Ο δικός μου θεός (My own God) by Vaggelis Avdikos (2004), Το αγόρι από τη Γη των Κικόνων (The boy from the Land of the Cicones) by Afroditi Evaggelidou-Tsetlaka (2006) and Δακρυσμένο διαμάντι. Το παράθυρο μιας Πομάκας στον ουρανό (The teary Diamond. The window of a Pomak woman to the sky) by Omiros Mavridis (2011).  The story is set mainly in the mountainous range of Xanthi while the time of narration ranges from the early years after the Civil War until the year 2009. Throughout the texts there is the repetitive pattern of the conversion of the Pomak territory into a supervised military zone by Metaxas’s regime until 1996 and the shameful setup of checkpoints for the moving citizens. The characterization of the Pomaks-heroes by the majority can be either positive or negative depending on the degree they fit their prefabricated image. Pomaks themselves identify themselves using terms which either defend their autonomy or show adherence to their Greek identity. In the Modern Greek novel we see the stereotypical image of the nice and positive for the majority of people Pomak. The central heroes of Pomak nationality behave in a way which diverges from their traditions but converges on the cultural terms of the dominant group.