Locating August Strindberg's Prose: Modernism, Transnationalism, and Setting

ISBN-13: 9781442641990 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 224 str.

Anna Westerstahl-Stenport

Opis

The setting of a novel is more than just an anonymous, interchangeable backdrop. In Locating August Strindberg's Prose, Anna Westerstahl Stenport argues that spatial setting is a key - though often neglected - tool for exploring the fundamentals of European literary modernism.Stenport examines the importance of location by exploring the prose of Swedish exile August Strindberg (1849-1912), challenging previous studies of the author that have focused on identity and subject formation. Strindberg wrote in both Swedish and French, situating his stories in various places across Europe - from Berlin to the French countryside, the Austrian Alps, and Stockholm - to purposely destabilize concepts of national belonging, language, and literary history. Close readings of Strindberg's prose find that his boundary-challenging narratives redefine and rewrite the meaning of a marginal literary identity. By contextualizing Strindberg against other early modernists, including Kafka, Conrad, Rilke, and Breton, Stenport emphasizes the burgeoning transnationality of literature at the turn of the last century.