Re-reading Armenian Modernity in Madt‘ēos Mamurian’s English Letters

Abstract

Abstract This article moves to examine Madt‘ēos Mamurian’s English Letters or the Destiny of an Armenian alongside issues of national consciousness and the modern political subject. Focusing on the narrative style and structure that allowed the author to problematize and cultivate the idea of reawakening the Armenian nation and individual as a political animal, the article claims to bring in the notion of the strange, stranger and the uncanny, as the operating tools in Mamurian’s engagement with the modern in a late nineteenth century Ottoman-Armenian context.