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- Title
Half-Digested Memory: Alimentary Aesthetics in Danish Travelogues during the French Revolution.
- Authors
Mentlen, Timon Von
- Abstract
In 1789, during the outset of the French Revolution, Jens Baggesen (1764–1826) embarked on a journey traversing Germany, Switzerland, and France. His experiences were later crystallized into a two-volume travelogue, Labyrinten , published between 1792 and 1793. In a similar vein, in 1793, Adam Moltke (1765–1843), a close friend of Baggesen, visited the besieged city of Mainz and subsequently chronicled his experiences in Reise nach Maynz (1794), also a two-volume work. Both authors, profoundly impacted by their travels, expressed a compulsion to write as an outlet. Intriguingly, their texts employ alimentary and metabolic metaphors to depict the act of experiencing as a form of ingestion, where impressions are consumed, assimilated, and eventually transformed into written narrative. This portrayal of memory and writing as a bodily process sharply diverges from the classical ideals of artistic and literary purity. This article argues that these alimentary and metabolic metaphors represent a subversive poetics, challenging conventional literary norms and offering a novel perspective on the interplay between human experience, bodily processes, and literary creation.
- Subjects
MAINZ (Germany : Landkreis); FRENCH Revolution, 1789-1799; POETICS; ARTISTIC creation; MEMORY; AESTHETICS; WRITING processes
- Publication
Scandinavian Studies, 2024, Vol 96, Issue 2, p93
- ISSN
0036-5637
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3368/scs.96.2.93