Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Eastern European (see also Russian & Former Soviet Union)

The Austrian Empire was not a colonial power in the sense that fellow actors like 19th-century England and France were. It nevertheless oversaw a multinational federation where the capital of Vienna was unmistakably linked with its eastern periphery in a quasi-colonial arrangement that inevitably shaped the cultural and intellectual life of the Habsburg Empire. This was particularly evident in the era's colonial utopian writing, and Tropics of Vienna blends literary criticism, cultural theory, and historical analysis to illuminate this curious genre. By analyzing the works of...

In the late Renaissance and Early Modern period, man s relationship to nature changed dramatically. An important part of this change occurred in the way that beauty was perceived in the natural world and in the particular features which became privileged objects of aesthetic gratification. This study explores the shift in aesthetic attitude towards the mountain that took place between 1450 and 1750. Over the course of these 300 years the mountain transformed from a fearful and ugly place to one of beauty and splendor. Accepted scholarly opinion claims that this change took place in the...

The book is a study of the eighteenth-century English robinsonade, also known as desert island or castaway narrative. It discusses the pre-history of the genre, the complex multi-level semantics of Robinson Crusoe, its role in introducing a new mode of meaning formation combining the conventions of the travel narrative, Providence book, and spiritual autobiography, as well as its functioning as a genre model for later authors. Another important subject is the subsequent process of robinsonade's simplification by the gradual elimination of religious meanings and foregrounding the exciting...

The Ukrainian national poetess Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1913) has contributed greatly to the development of Ukrainian Modernism and its transition from Ukrainian ethnographic themes to subjects that were universal, historical and psychological. Breaking the thematic conventions of populist literature, she sought difficult and complex motifs and gave them original treatment: themes such as the revolutionary ideological conflicts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which appear in some of her later poetry, are strengthened, given greater impact by her method of applying the individual...

Die Autorin rekonstruiert Goethes Persien-Bild, wie es sich einerseits aus dem West-Ostlichen Divan und andererseits aus den umfangreichen Nachforschungen, Lekturen, Briefwechseln und Schriften ergibt, die der Dichter im Verlauf der Entstehung und Produktion seines Werkes herangezogen hat. Sie fasst Goethes Text als eine Art Austauschprojekt zwischen Ost und West und nicht als eine bloe Rekonstruktion orientalischer Dichtungstraditionen auf. Transkulturell verstanden, thematisiert der Divan eine Offnung zwischen okzidentalischen Bausteinen und orientalischen Werten. Das Buch diskutiert die...

Ukraine and Europe challenges the popular perception of Ukraine as a country torn between Europe and the east. Twenty-two scholars from Europe, North America, and Australia explore the complexities of Ukraine's relationship with Europe and its role the continent's historical and cultural development.

Encompassing literary studies, history, linguistics, and art history, the essays in this volume illuminate the interethnic, interlingual, intercultural, and international relationships that Ukraine has participated in. The volume is divided chronologically into three parts: the...

The comparative gesture performs both the act and the question of transition between the terms compared. Understood as an intercultural practice, comparative literature may thus also be understood as both a transitive and a transnational process, creating its own object and form of knowledge as it identifies and analyses lines of relation and exchange between literary cultures. When navigating between languages, the discipline becomes critically engaged with the possibility and methods of such navigation. Interdisciplinary and intermedial versions of comparative studies likewise centre...

The book, through textual analyses, brings concepts of Senghorian Negritude and Emersonian ideas into a cross-cultural dialogue, and thus opens up a completely new perspective in research on the history of ideas. It synthesizes the diverse cultural, literary, philosophical and religious trends which have impacted on the complex and elusive fields of Transcendentalism and Negritude. Focusing on the current debate on influences and affinities in literary and cultural studies, the book shows that African religions and philosophy have influenced the formation of American...

The book demonstrates the thematic unity underlying Angela Carter's fiction and non-fiction. The author analyzes their interdependence and demonstrates how Carter's texts persistently examine existing theories of pleasure from many different angles. In this way, Carter's works enter into dialogue with numerous pleasure connoisseurs, theorists as well as writers. The author determines the notion of 'pleasure' is both the key to accounting for the heterogeneity of Carter's output, as well as the common denominator of all her diverse fascinations. This is an issue that remains unaccounted for...

Die zahlreichen literarischen Verknupfungen zwischen den Werken Franz Kafkas und Haruki Murakamis, denen sich diese semiotische Abhandlung widmet, haben bisher in der internationalen Forschung kaum Beachtung gefunden. Dabei zeigt sich im Zwischenspiel der phantastischen Erzahlungen Kafkas und Murakamis nicht nur deren unauflosliche Verbindung fur die Literatur des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, sondern auch eine Reihe neuer Erkenntnisse uber das Phantastische in der Literatur an sich.

Das Buch versteht sich als Diskussionsbeitrag zur Phantastikforschung, als Konsolidierung der...

Paru en 1885, Germinal, le roman de d'Emile Zola, occupe toujours le devant de la scene litteraire et sociale.

Entre viol de la nature et nostalgie d'une poesie champetre, quelle est l'evolution artistique de la mine dans la litterature francaise avant Germinal ? Quel sens proposent les textes precurseurs du roman ? Sont-ils evocateurs nostalgiques d'un monde terrible et fraternel ? Que nous revele la construction du roman, sa genese, les moments cles tant de l'enonciation que de l'enonce ? Quel sens a eu le roman pour ses contemporains, pour ses lecteurs, la...

From our homes to our houses of government, from our schoolyards to our stadia, from our galleries to our gable walls, folklore is not only preserved but continues to be reimagined in all aspects of everyday life in Ireland. In the twenty-first century, the traditions of Irish folklore are engaged in a constant process of regeneration, where the old and the new, the oral, the textual and the visual intermingle. However, while the first life of Irish folklore has amassed a vast literature, what has attracted less attention is its second life the variety of ways in which traditions have been...

This volume brings together articles written by experts in the literary history of Central and Eastern European literatures. The overarching topic is the export of Socialist Realism into Europe after WWII, but the authors are interested not so much in highlighting the generalised, top-down mechanism of the project, as in the particularities of each specific national and cultural context. Research shows that in practice the introduction of the Soviet cultural model was not quite the smooth endeavour that it was intended to be; rather, it was always a work in progress, often born out of a...