Vakarų Europa XVI a. antrosios pusės – XVIII a. Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės kelionių raštijoje : disertacija

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Kelionių raštija; Vakarų Europa; Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); 16 amžius; 17 amžius; 18 amžius; Travel writing; Western Europe; 16th–18th centuries.

ENTravelling, both locally and internationaly, was especially important in Early modern society. Travelling to Western European countries from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (hereinafter – GDL) intensified significantly in the second half of the 16th–18th centuries, with noblemen or their children travelling increasingly for studying abroad, getting to know foreign countries, their cultures and people, and visiting religious sites. With the increase in travelling, special written genres developed – theoretical publications (teaching the younger public to travel purposefully, to pay attention to important landmarks, so that the journey would be educational), travel accounts, travel guides. The phenomenon of travelling is revealed through a variety of genres in literature that allow analysing and studying 16th–18th century travels and their separate stages from the perspective of the travellers themselves. The upsurge of various kinds of personal writing (correspondence and diary writing) provides an oportunity for analysing travelling in the Early Modern Period based on a variety of aspects – from travel routes to travel aims as well as experiences gained during travelling. The history of travelling is a complex topic that includes a variety of aspects: organisational, technical, financial, etc., many of which have not been thoroughly researhced in Lithuanian historiography. There are different methods on how to analyse empirical data related to the organisational aspect of travel, however these have been developed in greater detail in Polish historiography. The question of understanding travel experience is much more difficult. How did the travellers from GDL in the period analysed describe the process of travelling? What had an impact on the ways in which individual and collective experience was expressed in travel writing?.What had an impact on the ways in which individual and collective experience was expressed in travel writing? How and why did the descriptions of natural and urban environments change over the period? What challenges did the travellers from GDL face? How significantly was GDL travel writing affected by the tendencies of Western travel writing? Equally important is the problem of travel writing as a source. The issues analysed in this dissertation are oriented towards the analysis of accounts on experience gained during journeys to Western Europe – description of the process of travelling, issues related to changes in the descriptions of natural and urban environments, as well as the expression of individual and collective experience in GDL travel writing. Although the issue of travelling from GDL to other European countries in the 16th–18th centuries is not entirely new and completely unresearched (Polish researchers have included GDL travellers and their journeys into their scope of research, and there are analyses of separate travel diaries), this phenomenon is mainly analysed from the organisational aspect, by studying the types of travel, their organisation, or methods of travelling. Moreover, research analysing 16th–18th century travel writing, mostly reviews travelling during the Baroque period, thus exluding later periods. Therefore, Lithuanian historiography still lacks a focused and intentional attempt to consolidate and analyse the experience of travellers from GDL to Western Europe and its expression in GDL travel writing. Several aspects of travelling have already been analysed in historiography. One of the most detailed accounts on Polish travel history was presented by Polish historian Adam Kucharski, who analysed the understanding of urbanistics, nature and the exotic in travel writing in the Baroque period.Another historian, Roman Krzywy, analysed the description of mountains during the Baroque period, emphasising the increasing interest in mountains during that period. This dissertation focuses on the development of the descriptions of specific travel elements in the examples of travel writing of the Baroque and Enlightenment periods under analysis. The prevalent description of travel organisation (route, travel type and travel expenses) is expanded by including novel aspects, such as the intention for writing travel accounts and its impact on travel writing. Even though travel writing has been discussed in publications devoted to literary history, they mainly analyse travel writing from the perspective of a specific period by describing the most significant tendencies. However, they do not reflect on the state of travel writing as periods change. This dissertation studies the development of travel and travel writing in the period analysed. Although the scope of travel accounts analysed is not wide (20 travel accounts), the aim of the dissertation is to draw guidelines on the development of travel accounts in the Baroque and Englightenment periods, by analysing how the objects/landmarks visited and their descriptions provided by travellers changed during these periods. Thus, the dissertation seeks to provide a landscape for this topic that could be filled in and expanded by future research by entering new travel accounts into scientific circulation. This dissertation analyses several travel accounts of the 18th century that have not been in scientific circulation before. A novel aspect of the dissertations is maps that illustrate the most popular and less discussed destinations and routes from the Commonwealth of Lithuania and Poland to Western Europe. The research object is the experience of travelers from the GDL when travelling to Western Europe as recorded in travel writing. [...]. [From the publication]