Literary and cultural images, once considered marginal to the main currents of political and institutional development in southeastern Europe, have been accorded much greater importance by scholars in recent years. In this volume Alex Drace-Francis brings together over fifteen years of work on the topic of representations of Romania and Romanians. Crossing the East-West divide, the book studies both external images of the country and people, and domestically-generated representations of Europe and 'the West'. It draws on material in a wide range of languages and offers a long-term view, providing a nuanced and historically-grounded contribution to the lively debates over Balkanism, Orientalism and identities in Romania and in Europe as a whole.

What is Europe? A continent? A political institution? A cultural community? Bringing together 101 key texts on the theme of European identity, this reader provides essential insights into the idea of 'Europe', from 450 BC to the twenty first century. The only collection of its kind in English, it includes rare and newly translated material alongside classic texts from antiquity and the Enlightenment, from figures as diverse as Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Winston Churchill and Julia Kristeva. Space is also given to views of Europe from the outside, including Asian, African, Latin American, US and Caribbean authors. With an introductory overview, notes on each text, and a guide to further reading, Alex Drace-Francis brings issues of European identity into sharp relief for both teachers and students of European history, geography, culture and politics.

..".offers a set of unique perspectives on how travel writers have imagined, experienced and represented other people and other places. It shifts attention to the voices and agency of travellers from the Balkans and the ways in which they have experienced and described the sometimes strange and exotic West... Most fascinating the multi-faceted trajectories of expectations, perceptions and imageries which reverse the standard hegemonic gaze from West to East." . Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

In writings about travel, the Balkans appear most often as a place travelled to. Western accounts of the Balkans revel in the different and the exotic, the violent and the primitive traits that serve (according to many commentators) as a foil to self-congratulatory defi nitions of the West as modern, progressive and rational. However, the Balkans have also long been travelled from. The region's writers have given accounts of their travels in the West and elsewhere, saying something in the process about themselves and their place in the world. The analyses presented here, ranging from those of 16th-century Greek humanists to 19th-century Romanian reformers to 20th-century writers, socialists and 'men-of-the-world', suggest that travellers from the region have also created their own identities through their encounters with Europe. Consequently, this book challenges assumptions of Western discursive hegemony, while at the same time exploring Balkan 'Occidentalisms'.

In writings about travel, the Balkans appear most often as a place traveled to. Western accounts of the Balkans revel in the different and the exotic, the violent and the primitive - traits that serve (according to many commentators) as a foil to self-congratulatory definitions of the West as modern, progressive, and rational. However, the Balkans have also long been traveled from. The region's writers have offered accounts of their travels in the West and elsewhere, saying something in the process about themselves and their place in the world. The analyses presented here, ranging from those of 16th-century Greek humanists to 19th-century Romanian reformers to 20th-century writers, socialists and men-of-the-world, suggest that travelers from the region have also created their own identities through their encounters with Europe. Consequently, this book challenges assumptions of Western discursive hegemony, while at the same time exploring Balkan 'Occidentalisms.'

This book challenges the notion that Western ideas were essential to Romanian development. It is a fascinating story of how a national culture is born. This book provides a history of the development of literary culture and the printed word in Romania. How do literacy and the development of literary culture promote the development of a national identity? "The Making of Modern Romanian Culture" examines the development of both a literary tradition and institutions aimed at promoting literacy in Romania in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - from Romanians under the control of the Austrian Empire in the eighteenth century to revolt in Romania under Tudor Vladimirescu in 1821 to Carol, the first King of Romania, crowned in 1881. Alex Drace-Francis combines analysis of education systems, book production, and the periodical press with case studies of key thinkers such as Mihai Eminescu, Ion Luca Caragiale and Titu Maiorescu to trace Romania's cultural and literary development. He offers a criticism of the idea that the 'penetration of Western ideas' was essential to modernism to place literacy and identity within both a Romanian and a global context.

Mamaliga, maize porridge or polenta, is a universally consumed dish in Romania and a prominent national symbol. But its unusual history has rarely been told. Alex Drace-Francis surveys the arrival and spread of maize cultivation in Romanian lands from Ottoman times to the eve of the First World War, and also the image of mamaliga in art and popular culture. Drawing on a rich array of sources and with many new findings, Drace-Francis shows how the making of mamaliga has been shaped by global economic forces and overlapping imperial systems of war and trade. The story of maize and mamaliga provides an accessible way to revisit many key questions of Romanian and broader regional history. More generally, the book links the history of production, consumption, and representation. Analyses of recipes, literary and popular depictions, and key vocabulary complete the work.

Do narratives make nations, and if so, did networks make this happen? The notion that national and other group identities are constructed and sustained by narratives and images has been widely postulated for several decades now. This volume contributes to this debate, with a particular emphasis on the networked, transnational nature of cultural nation-building processes in a comparative European and sometimes extra-European context. It gathers together essays that engage with objects of study ranging from poetry, prose, and political ideas to painting, porcelain, and popular song, and which draw on examples in Icelandic, Arabic, German, Irish, Hungarian, and French, among other languages. The contributors study transcultural phenomena from the medieval and early modern periods through to the modern and postmodern era, frequently challenging conventional periodizations and analytical frameworks based on the idea of the nation-state.

Twelve studies explicitly developed to elaborate on travel writing published in book form by east Europeans travelling in Europe from ca. 1550 to 2000. How did east Europeans have positioned themselves with relation to the notion of Europe, and how has the genre of travel writing served as a means of exploring and disseminating these ideas? A truly comparative and collective work with a substantial introductory study, the book has taken full advantage of the interdisciplinary and comparative potential of the team of project scholars working in the different national literatures, from different disciplinary perspectives

The bibliography volume of the three-volume "East Looks West: East European Travel Writing in Europe" collates travel writing published in book form by east Europeans travelling in Europe from ca. 1550 to 2000. It is intended as a fundamental research tool, collecting together travel writings within each national/linguistic tradition, and enabling comparative analysis of such material. It fills an important gap in the existing reference literature, both in western and east European languages, and will be of use to those working in the growing fields of comparative travel writing, regional and national identities, and postcolonialism.These texts exist in surprisingly large numbers, and include writings of high literary quality as well as of historical interest, but they have been relatively little studied as a genre. Much of this material is rare and difficult to find, even in national libraries. As a result, there are few bibliographical surveys of the literature of east European travel and self-representation, and none that are region-wide or comparative in scope. This is the third volume of a three-part set of "East Looks West", Vol. 1 - "An Anthology of East European Travel Writing on Europe"; and Vol. 2 - "A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe".

Eurocentrism means seeing the world in Europe's terms and through European eyes. This may not be unreasonable for Europeans, but there are unforeseen consequences. Eurocentric history implies that a scientific modernity has diffused out from Europe to benefit the rest of the world, through colonies and development aid. It involves the imposition of European norms on places and times where they are often quite inappropriate. In Eurocentrism in European History and Memory, well-known scholars explore and critically analyse manifestations of Eurocentrism in representations of the European past from different disciplines - history, literature, art, memory and cultural policy - as well as from different geographical perspectives. The book investigates the role imaginings of the European past since the eighteenth century played in the construction of a Europeanist worldview and the ways in which 'Europe' was constructed in literature and art.

Mamaliga, maize porridge or polenta, is a universally consumed dish in Romania and a prominent national symbol. But its unusual history has rarely been told. Alex Drace-Francis surveys the arrival and spread of maize cultivation in Romanian lands from Ottoman times to the eve of the First World War, and also the image of mamaliga in art and popular culture. Drawing on a rich array of sources and with many new findings, Drace-Francis shows how the making of mamaliga has been shaped by global economic forces and overlapping imperial systems of war and trade. The story of maize and mamaliga provides an accessible way to revisit many key questions of Romanian and broader regional history. More generally, the book links the history of production, consumption, and representation. Analyses of recipes, literary and popular depictions, and key vocabulary complete the work.

How do literacy and the development of literary culture promote the development of a national identity? Here Alex Drace-Francis offers a well-researched and readable guide to the development of literary, educational, and printing institutions in the Romanian lands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In twenty concise yet scholarly chapters, Drace-Francis both provides a state-of-the-art overview of current knowledge, and makes an original contribution to debates about print culture, modernization, national identity, and state formation.