Kaks Narvat. Linna kujutamine 1960. ja 2023. aasta teejuhis

The article examines two reference works devoted to Estonia’s border city Narva, one of which was published in 1960, the other in 2023. Through comparison the guidebooks’ pragmatics and rhetoric come to the fore with clarity. In analysing the texts each reference work’s genre particularities and its ideological, cultural and educational aspects were taken into account. The main objective was to elucidate the ways in which the city was presented and how its image was shaped, including how it reflected historical experience and the multifaceted present day. To this end the article compares the guidebooks’ compositional structure, semantic accents and descriptive language. The authors describe historical monuments, contemporary buildings, individual districts and marche-routes. When compiling the guidebooks, each author is confronted with the choice of objects in a changing urban landscape: after destruction during the war and Soviet development up to the year 1960 on the one hand, and after extensive construction and renovation work up till 2023 on the other. In order to clarify the ways of presentation of the city through chosen objects, the article brings out two directions that are used in both reference works: visualisation through verbal description and the construction of a narrative. When investigating the structure of the guidebooks the relationship between historical and contemporary marche-routes is compared. The 1960 guidebook clearly shows how an historical excursion can serve ideological purposes. Between the publication of this guidebook and the contemporary excursion guide to Narva, an era elapsed during which the values orientations of the target group and the criteria for the attractiveness of the city to tourists changed. A specific conjuncture of the two texts was the description of the Kreenholm district, showing change in both the addressee of the reference work and the representation of the image of the city. In general, in comparing the two texts a discursive shift becomes apparent, accompanied by completely different approaches to the choice and dissemination of objects of description. As a result, a newness in presenting Narva to tourists can be recognised as well as a revision of the fundamental ideas of the residents’ identity.