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TRAVELOGUES IN LATVIAN LITERATURE (LATE 20TH - EARLY 21ST CENTURY): DECONSTRUCTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF MENTAL BORDERS
Abstract
The development of the travelogue genre in a national literature is closely related to the geographical and mental cartography that characterizes the respective territory. Moreover, the strategies for perceiving, mapping and describing the lands, countries and regions which the writer has become familiar with while traveling are usually informed by the historical tradition and the ideological context of one's epoch. The travelogue genre in any national literature is one of those literary genres that essentially depend on the historical, political, and socio-cultural situation in the respective country. It is demonstrated by the evolution of the content of this genre in Latvian literature. Travel geography, motivation of choosing the travel route and material of narration relating of what the author considers to be unusual, different and worth telling about, stand evidence of the general processes in the respective territory or country. The intensity of travelogue in contemporary Latvian literature is related to two major geopolitical and historical events that affected the trends of development of travelogue genre: Latvia joining the European Union in 2004 and entering Shengen zone in 2007. With the extension of traveling opportunities, many travelers had a desire to share one's sensations, impressions, experience, therefore the travelogue genre was taken up by both amateurs and journalists and recognized writers. It is significant that travel narratives as well as recent literature on the whole have been affected by trends of genre diffusion and overlapping, thus texts inspired by travel impressions have been defined by authors in various ways, e.g. travel sketches, diaries, essays. The comparative analysis enables me to demonstrate different strategies of mental mapping of various regions and states at the same epoch.
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