Between the Individual and the Collective: The Poetics of Romantic Croatian Travel Literature Using Antun Nemčić Gostovinski and Stanko Vraz as Case Studies

Abstract

Using the travel accounts of specific figures of Croatian romanticism, this article analyzes the relationship between travel writing and personal writing (travel journals, correspondence) and the ideologies of unification and revival that were widespread in Croatia at the time. This article demonstrates the formal and ideological subordination of the actual journeys (travel) and their published accounts (travel writing) to the overarching objective of creating a new Croatian nation, language, and literature. Nineteenth-century Slavophilia shaped the perspectives authors brought to the lands they traveled, compelling them to take on the role of ethnographer and advocate for all aspects that seem Slavic, Croatian, or at all related to folk heritage. Metatextual passages in these texts speak directly to the given text’s function and poetics, demonstrating the notion that this genre was understood in cognitive and utilitarian terms.