Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> European - Scandinavian

Despite being a minor language, Danish literature is one of the world's most actively translated, and the Scandinavian country is the home of a number of significant writers. Hans Christian Andersen remains one of the most translated authors in the world, philosopher Soren Kierkegaard inspired modern Existentialism, Karen Blixen chronicled her life in colonial Kenya as well as writing imaginary, cosmopolitan tales, and the writers among the circles of literary critic Georg Brandes in the late 19th century were especially important to the further development of European Modernism....

The Saints in Old Norse and Early Modern Icelandic Poetry is a complimentary volume to The Legends of the Saints in Old Norse-Icelandic Prose (UTP 2013). While its predecessor dealt primarily with medieval prose texts about the saints, this volume not only focuses on medieval poems about saints but also on Icelandic devotional poetry created during the early modern period. The handlist organizes saints' names, manuscripts, and editions of individual poems with references to approximate dates of the manuscripts, as well as modern Icelandic editions and translations. Each entry...

Using James Joyce's Dubliners as a discrete guide, celebrated Norwegian writer Tomas Espedal wanders the streets of his hometown. On the journey, he takes notes, reflects, writes a diary, and draws portraits of the city and its...

Njord and Skadi: A Myth Explored delves into the story of the Norse giantess Skadi and her unhappy marriage to the sea-god Njord. As compensation, after the gods killed her father, Skadi is given a choice of husbands from among the gods, but she has to choose by looking at just their feet. She chooses the finest-looking feet, believing them to belong to Baldr, but finds to her dismay that she chose the Vanir god Njord instead. Not surprisingly, the marriage does not work out, and they each return to their respective domains, with Skadi keeping her status as a...

Nobel laureate Tomas TranstrOmer (1931-2015) is one of Sweden's most important writers. He is also one of the most influential figures in contemporary world literature. His career spanned fifty years, and thirteen collections of poetry, which include 170 poems. His poems have been translated into more than 60 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Persian and Malayalam. Among the array of awards that he has received are the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1990), the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize (1991), the Griffin Poetry Prize (2007), and the Nobel Prize for Literature...

In the decade following World War I, American literature won a large and enthusiastic reading public in Europe. With the exception of such writers as James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mark Twain, American literature had been virtually unknown before the war, yet, in 1930, Sweden awarded the Nobel Prize in literature to Sinclair Lewis, probably the most dramatic sign of the critical upheaval that had been taking place in European attitudes toward American culture.

The Swedish Acceptance of American Literature is a study of this radical shift in opinion as it occurred in...

The Evangelium Nicodemi, or Gospel of Nicodemus, was the most widely circulated apocryphal writing in medieval Europe. It depicted the trial, Passion, and crucifixion of Christ as well as his Harrowing of Hell. During the twelfth-century renaissance, some exemplars of the Evangelium Nicodemi found their way to Iceland where its text was later translated into the vernacular and known as Ni?rstigningar saga.

Dario Bullitta has embarked on a highly fascinating voyage that traces the routes of transmission of the Latin text to Iceland and continental...

Not only did Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen, 1885-1962) read the works of her fellow-countryman, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), closely, she also created a surprisingly large number of tales that critically engage Kierkegaard’s works. In this thorough comparative study, Mads Bunch uncovers Dinesen’s exploration of Kierkegaard and shows how Dinesen in her tales subverts major ideas from Kierkegaard’s works concerning Christianity, seduction, gender and repetition. Bunch also shows how Dinesen’s critical engagement with the ideas of...