“Where East meets West”: Travel narratives and the fashioning of a Dalmatian artistic heritage in
modern Europe
(c. 1675 – c. 1941)
The Travelogues Dalmatia project by the Institute of Art History, funded by the HRZZ (Croatian Science Foundation), brings together a team of theorists in the fields of comparative literature, architectural history, art history, history, and architecture. This interdisciplinary research project develops the approach and findings of the HRZZ project Dalmatia as a Destination of the European Grand Tour in the 18th and the 19th Centuries (Grand Tour Dalmatia), the first in Croatia to analyse textual and visual travel narratives on an equal footing. Travelogues Dalmatia will focus on an important shift in the role of travelogues – from describing spaces to interpreting the artistic heritage of Dalmatia – during a period that saw the popularisation and internationalisation of the travel genre.
Our work builds on the contention that it is impossible to understand how a view of Dalmatian artistic heritage was formed in the European imaginary without carrying out a comparative study of a wide range of travel narratives (whose genre and medium vary, along with the background of the author-traveller and the motivation for travelling) that together contributed to its construction. Our next hypothesis is that the travelogue, as a form, is an autonomous multidisciplinary and multimedia practice. This project will expand the category of the travelogue to incorporate various media, and will include the first systematic study of women’s travelogues.
The research project will be conducted from December 2023 to December 2027.
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