Ruritania
Ruritania is a fictional kingdom in Central Europe that was first known as the location of the plot of the adventure novel The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) by the British Anthony Hope . It gave the genre of the ruritan romances its name.
literature
Ruritania was invented as the setting for three novels by the writer Anthony Hope : The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), The Heart of Princess Osra (1896) and Rupert von Hentzau (1898). The kingdom is also the setting for several sequels and variations, e.g. E.g. in Simon Hawke's science fiction rework The Zenda Vendetta (Time Wars Book 4), 1985), John Haythorne's novel The Streslau Dimension , which is set in the era of communism, and John Spurling's humorous thriller After Zenda (1995) after the Cold War .
In Hope's work, Ruritania is represented as a German-speaking, Catholic country with an absolute monarchy , with profound social conflicts that are reflected in the conflicts of the first novel. Geographically, Ruritania is usually located between Saxony and Bohemia : the author suggests that the capital Strelsau is on the railway line from Dresden to Prague . Hope's novels create the impression that one would not like to live in Ruritania: an incompetent, autocratic king, police surveillance of suspected subversive elements and a society that is deeply divided into rich and poor. Stage and film versions have of course changed the setting into a harmless and romantic one, without going into Hope's references to the poverty and political unrest in Strelsau's old town; rather, they draw an idyllic fairytale land. Of the newer authors who fall back on Hope's setting, neither Hawke nor Spurling adhere to Hope's model; their works show the influences of film adaptations. Hawke is moving Ruritania to the Balkans , making it smaller and with greater social cohesion; Spurling, who settled the country in the Carpathian Mountains , introduced ethnic and linguistic divisions; In contrast, Haythorne relocates Ruritania east of Czechoslovakia .
Hope's novels made Ruritania a generic term for every imaginative realm as a setting for romantic love, intrigue and adventure. In Evelyn Waugh's comic novel Lust und Laster ( Vile Bodies , 1930), a character is a deposed, sappy "ex-king of Ruritania". One can assume that it is the same character that appears in some of the stories of PG Wodehouse , mainly as the doorman of Barribault's Hotel.
The country gave its name to an entire genre of literature, " ruritan romance, " including the Greyish novels by George Barr McCutcheon .
National economy
Ruritanien is also the name of a hypothetical country, on the basis of which representatives of the Austrian School of Economics teach economic concepts. Well-known economists who have adopted this tradition include Ludwig von Mises , Murray Rothbard , Henry Hazlitt, and Walter Block . Walter Lippmann used the word to describe the stereotype that determined the vision of international relations during and after the First World War .
In nationalism and modernity ( Nations and Nationalism ) by Ernest Gellner Ruritania is used to the stereotypical development of nationalism in Eastern Europe in the 19th century to present. Here historical narratives of national movements among the Czechs , Poles , Serbs , Romanians etc. are interwoven. In Gellner's story, rural Ruritans who live in the “realm of megalomania” develop a national consciousness due to the development of a ruritan “high culture” by a small group of ruritan intellectuals in response to industrialization and labor migration.
Lawyers who specialize in international law also often use the name Ruritania (as well as those of other fictional countries) when constructing a hypothetical case to shed light on a legal issue.
Ruritania also provided the idea for many other fictional countries, such as Ixania in Eric Ambler's The Dark Frontier ; with the original, they share the representation of complex power struggles in a fictional country, in which the main character, a visitor from a real country, is deeply involved.
The Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer spoke of Ruritania as a fictitious enemy when he was a security agreement between Australia and Indonesia (signed on 8 November 2006) stated, "We do not need a security agreement with Indonesia, so that we fend off both the Ruritanier. That's not what this relationship is about. It's about working together on the threats we face, and they're different types of threats. "
The professor of biochemistry, science and science fiction author and humor theorist Isaac Asimov always relocated ethnically discriminatory jokes to Ruritania.
In the radio play series Professor van Dusen by Michael Koser , Ruritanien appears in the episode Hatch wants to marry in 1981: marriage frauds disguise themselves as Ruritan nobility.
font
Ruritania is also an Art Nouveau - Gothic script , which by Australian designer Paul J. Lloyd was designed.
History
Arnold J. Toynbee named in his book Kultur am Scheidewege as a metaphor that part of Europe that had to be civilized by the USA after the Second World War in the "western-democratic sense", Ruritania.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Europa-Verlag, Zurich 1949, p. 138