Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-2009

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

German

Major Professor

Stefanie Ohnesorg

Committee Members

Stefanie Ohnesorg, Maria Stehle, Daniel Magilow

Abstract

The following thesis compares the travelogue Orientalische Briefe by the German author Ida von Hahn-Hahn with the travel journals Mes Journaliers by the French author Isabelle Eberhardt, in the context of how each woman represents herself as a female traveler and author. The comparative study analyzes whether both authors in these texts deal with the issue of breaking out of social and cultural restrictions while traveling to the ‘Orient’. The overall question of my thesis concerns what kind of filters did they use to speak about the ‘cultural other’.

The personal backgrounds of Ida von Hahn-Hahn and Isabelle Eberhardt differ in several aspects. The German author Ida von Hahn-Hahn visited the ‘Orient’ in 1843 temporarily and each place on only one occasion whereas the French author Isabelle Eberhardt constantly traveled at the end of the 19th century and at the same time she turned North Africa into her new home. These texts were analyzed in the context of gender discourse analysis, focusing on the discourse of feminity in the 19th century and the discourse of the Western world about the ‘Orient’. The comparison showed similarities and differences in the way both authors present themselves and the ‘Arab woman’ by (de-)constructing pre-existing ‘images’.

In my analysis I was able to demonstrate that both authors consciously deal with the western femininity discourse of the 19th century and the Western discourse about the ‘Orient’ by selecting similar motives. Even though their results are quite different, both authors clearly use the ‘Orient’ to express their search of one’s self.

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