Make Yourself at Home Far Away from Home: Food, Drinks, and Hospitality in Caucasian and Armenian Households as Experienced in Nineteenth-Century British Travel Writings

Résumé En

This talk considers the representation of foods, drinks, and the concept of Eastern hospitality in four 19th-century British travel writings: 1. Glen, William (1823). Journal of a tour from Astrachan to Karass, north of the mountains of the Caucasus; containing remarks on the general appearance of the country, manners of the inhabitants, &c.; with the substance of many conversations with effendis [higher classes of the priesthood], mollas [priests], and other Mohammedans, on the questions at issue between them and Christians. 2. Lyall, Robert (1825). Travels in Russia, the Krimea, the Caucasus, and Georgia. 3. Henderson, Ebenezer (1826). Biblical researches and travels in Russia; including a tour in the Crimea; and the passage of the Caucasus: with observations on the state of the Rabbinical and Karaite Jews, and the Mohammedan and pagan tribes, inhabiting the southern provinces of the Russian Empire. 4. Grove, Florence Crauford (1875). ‘The frosty Caucasus’: an account of a walk through part of the range and of an ascent of Elbruz in the summer of 1874. // These accounts reveal instances of local hospitality or otherwise unwillingness to accommodate the traveler. They discuss the abundance of wine yet abstention from it in other cases; the "savage" traits of the Caucasians yet also their strengths over the Europeans; cultural and national differences but also togetherness and similarities. In the four travel writings we not only identify the locals being gazed at but, inversely, the visitors being observed and discussed by "curious" natives, effectively switching the traveler-travelee dynamic.