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De bedrieglijke verlokking van de tropen: Het vreemde in het dagboek van István Radnai
185-197Views:132István Radnai left his home country in 1914, hoping to achieve a brighter and richer future life. With his cousin, László Székely, he traveled to the then Dutch Indies, to Sumatra in order to become rich as a planter. After five weeks, however, he returned disappointed to Hungary, where he saw the beginning of the First World War. On the basis of his diary it is possible to reconstruct the reasons why he found it necessary to escape from the “self” and why he chose the tempting, unknown world. The binary opposition formed in this way undergoes a change in a different context; it becomes shifted and turned around. The interesting “other” becomes frightful and threatening which makes the “self” more valuable at the same time.
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In het land van de koppensnellers* : De representatie van Borneo in de reisliteratuur van de 19de eeuw
49-67Views:152Borneo was regarded as a terra incognita for the European travelers in the 19th century. Only few of them could reach the island covered with jungle and even fewer of them wrote about their experiences. In the following study, I am trying to find an answer in travelogues written by 19th -century travelers to the question how Bornean natives were seen and presented by Europeans who ended up on the island. In other words, how the Other was represented in these works. I will compare this image of the Other with the representation of the Bornean natives as shown in the diary of a lesser-known Hungarian traveler, Xavér Ferenc Witti.