VIOLENCIA Y CONVIVENCIA EN LA LITERATURA DE VIAJES: ORIENTE DE VICENTE BLASCO IBÁÑEZ

Abstract

Travel literature as a border genre (which combines representative and poetic function) is based on different oppositions (reality-fiction, us-others) and clashes (between expectation and reality, which mainly ends in the confirmation of expectations, its betrayal or discursive violence to adjust reality to expectations). Sometimes they are resolved violently in order to reconcile and bring closer two ends of this opposition, the two cultures. Therefore, they can be read through the prism of peace and conflict, violence and coexistence, demonstrating, with its permanence and popularity over time, a survival of this literary genre and its relevance for intercultural studies. In this article, we propose to read Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s travelogues Orient based on the analysis of the previously mentioned guidelines. In this work, in addition to the main meeting of the West and the East, the Spanish culture of the traveler and the visited Turkish one, several side questions arise that imply different procedures when constructing the images of the places and towns visited. Among them we want to highlight some that produce images of violence and coexistence.