A romantic image under classical omen: Caves, ruins, and churches shrouded by swathes in the Mediterranean, Balkans, and the Orient

Abstract

Joseph Baron of Auffenberg transferred his romantically guided interest
in history to Adrianople, the Ottoman capital located in a natural
landscape, where the search for indentification met alterity expressed
in a traditionally rich contrast surrounded by twilight. Using the example
of Auffenberg’s Drama Skanderbeg (1846), the paper examines
the extent to which literature reflects patterns of identification in accordance
with the poetic currents of the classical period and romanticism,
which create ideas of the Adriatic Balkan region as a part of a
common cultural ground. The locations of caves, ruins and churches
reflect a fixed order of ethical value structure, ergo the fictionalization
of alterity that shapes identity in historical discourse.