The present study has two major goals: first it reconstructs the history of travel-literature from the Middle Ages to the 19th century with a special focus on the role of women, second it attempts to analyse and evaluate travel-accounts by women who travelled to the Orient in the 19th century (Engel-Egli, Forneris, Pfeiffer, Hahn-Hahn and Muhlbach). / The reconstruction of the history of travel and travel-literature up to the 18th century shows that it was possible for women to travel with relative freedom. With the polarization of gender-roles in the last third of the 18th century, however, women were declared 'unfit for travel' and confined to their homes. Due to this development, travel-accounts by women travelling to the Orient, that were written in the middle of the 19th century, have to fulfil a special function. Besides representing an attempt to reestablish the tradition of female travellers that had been suppressed from the middle of the 18th century on, travelling to the Orient meant that the female authors in question had access to areas and spaces that were both off limits to their male counterparts (i.e. the harem) and charged with sexually connoted images. Forneris,' Pfeiffer's and Hahn-Hahn's statements can be interpreted as a conscious attempt to criticize European man through the deconstruction of the images of the Oriental femme fatale in two ways: the first criticism is that they present themselves as authorities with regard to the domain of the Oriental woman. The second occurs through consciously creating grotesque anti-images, whereby women turn the "oriental dream" of their male contemporaries into a nightmare. This act of turning the images into their opposite happens without taking into account the culturally different woman. She has been reduced to the status of an object by women travelling to the Orient exactly in the same manner as male colleagues reduced them. / In addition, this analysis gives special consideration to much discussed 19th century elements of racial theories which found their way into the travel accounts.

Zugl.: München, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2004

Univ., Diss.--Mainz, 2004.

Zugl.: Leipzig, Univ., Diss., 2003 u.d.T.: Kamil, Omar: Von Ben Gurion zu Ovadia Yosef: der aschkenasische Staat und die Funktion der arabischen Juden

Zugl.: Würzburg, Univ., Diss., 2004

Univ., Phil. Diss.--Bonn, 1879.

Zugl.: Münster (Westfalen), Univ., Diss., 2003

Inaug. - Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät--München, 1972. / Bibliogr. p. 147-151.

Inaug. _ Diss.: Philosophische Fakultät: Munster, Westfalen: 1975. _ Bibliogr. p. XIV-XVI. Index.

Tese de doutoramento--Literatura portuguesa--Bombay--Universidade de Bombaím, 1983.