Estambul otomano de Juan Goytisolo: lo propio y lo ajeno

Abstract

The journeys to the East have generated a rich imagery in Western culture. Juan Goytisolo’s Ottoman Istanbul addresses this issue introducing the city and its past to the contemporary European visitor. He reviews the clichés collected by travelers and shows us how the city has been used in many cases as a scapegoat for personal fears. This paper aims to detect and analyze the intertextual strategies used by Goytisolo to enrich typical views of the city and to connect the Ottoman world to the contemporary one. The author looks for testimonies that provide us with different points of view, such as the letters of Lady Montagu or quotations from A Trip to Turkey. On the other hand, he compares the Oriental and Western worlds. Traveling to Istanbul thus becomes a way to approach this exotic universe, but also a self revealing experience.