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The literary field and canon in the Nordic countries are under constant negotiation and transformation, with various alternative literatures having evolved alongside the majority literatures of these nations in recent decades. These new phenomena, constructed around perspectives regarding language, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and social class, have been categorised as migration, minority and queer literatures. Rethinking National Literatures and the Literary Canon in Scandinavia highlights these literatures and their histories, roles and impacts on both the literary establishment and (post)modern societies in the Nordic region. It also discusses how the constructions of national literary canons today are challenged by the influence of various critical perspectives, including postcolonial theories, and queer, indigenous, ethnic literary and gender studies. On a broader level, the book showcases the position literature has in the building of national identities in Nordic nation-states, and, in the process, demonstrates that the plurality of perspectives in literary studies has the potential to question the fundamentals of the literary canon, canon formations, national self-understanding, and identity. The book is composed of nine articles authored by literary scholars in Finland, Sápmi, Sweden, and Denmark. It addresses issues such as methodological nationalism in literary scholarship, the uses of concepts such as “transnational” and “immigrant” literature, the ways in which traditional Sámi features are employed in contemporary Sámi poetry, postcolonial representations in Nordic literature, and the ways that political processes of “Othering” are made visible in contemporary literature’s uses of traditional Scandinavian folklore. Read together, these articles provide an overview of some of the challenges and changes in Nordic literature today.
Migrants and Literature in Finland and Sweden presents new comparative perspectives on transnational literary studies. This collection provides a contribution to the production of new narratives of the nation. The focus of the contributions is contemporary fiction relating to experiences of migration. The volume discusses multicultural writing, emerging modes of writing and generic innovations. When people are in motion, it changes nations, cultures and peoples. The volume explores the ways in which transcultural connections have affected the national self-understanding in the Swedish and Finnish context. It also presents comparative aspects on the reception of literary works and explores the intersectional perspectives of identities including class, gender, ethnicity, ‘race’ and disability. Further, it also demonstrates the complexity of grouping literatures according to nation and ethnicity. The case-studies are divided into three chapters: II ‘Generational Shifts’, III ‘Reception and Multicultural Perspectives’ and IV ‘Writing Migrant Identities’. The migration of Finnish labourers to Sweden is reflected in Satu Gröndahl’s and Kukku Melkas’s contributions to this volume, the latter also discusses material related to the placing of Finnish war children (‘krigsbarn’) in Sweden during World War II. Migration between Russia and Finland is discussed by Marja Sorvari, while Johanna Domokos attempts at mapping the Finnish literary field and offering a model for literary analysis. Transformations of the Finnish literary field are also the focus of Hanna-Leena Nissilä’s article discussing the reception of novels by a selection of women authors with an im/migrant background. The African diaspora and the arrival of refugees to Europe from African countries due to wars and political conflicts in the 1970s is the backdrop of Anne Heith’s analysis of migration and literature, while Pirjo Ahokas deals with literature related to the experiences of a Korean adoptee in Sweden. Migration from Africa to Sweden also forms the setting of Eila Rantonen’s article about a novel by a successful, Swedish author with roots in Tunisia. Exile, gender and disability are central, intertwined themes of Marta Ronne’s article, which discusses the work of a Swedish-Latvian author who arrived in Sweden in connection to World War II. This collection is of particular interest to students and scholars in literary and Nordic studies as well as transnational and migration studies.
How did Nordic culture become associated with the fuzzy brand “cool”, as by default? In Exploring NORDIC COOL in Literary History twenty-one scholars in collaboration question the seemingly natural fit between “Nordic” and “Cool” by investigating its variegated trajectories through literary history, from medieval legends to digital poetry. At the same time, the elasticity and polysemy of the word “cool” become a means to explore Nordic literary history afresh. It opens up a rich diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches within a regional framework and reveals hitherto unseen links between familiar and less familiar tracks and sites. Following diverse paths of “Nordic cool” in respect to – among other things – nature, survival, love, whiteness, style, economics, heroism and colonialism, this book challenges all-too-recognisable narratives, and underlines the sheer knowledge potential of literary historical research.
This volume presents regional approaches on the formation and transformation of national literary canons as a practice of nation-building in various cultural traditions (Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Estonian, etc.) from the 19th century to the present times.
This open access collection offers a detailed mapping of recent Nordic literature and its different genres (fiction, poetry, and children’s literature) through the perspective of spatiality. Concentrating on contemporary Nordic literature, the book presents a distinctive view on the spatial turn and widens the understanding of Nordic literature outside of canonized authors. Examining literatures by Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish authors, the chapters investigate a recurrent theme of social criticism and analyze this criticism against the welfare state and power hierarchies in spatial terms. The chapters explore various narrative worlds and spaces—from the urban to parks and forests, from textual spaces to spatial thematics, studying these spatial features in relation to the problems of late modernity.
This collection showcases a multivalent approach to the study of literary multilingualism, embodied in contemporary Nordic literature. While previous approaches to literary multilingualism have tended to take a textual or authorship focus, this book advocates for a theoretical perspective which reflects the multiplicity of languages in use in contemporary literature emerging from increased globalization and transnational interaction. Drawing on a multimodal range of examples from contemporary Nordic literature, these eighteen chapters illustrate the ways in which multilingualism is dynamic rather than fixed, resulting from the interactions between authors, texts, and readers as well as between literary and socio-political institutions. The book highlights the processes by which borders are formed within the production, circulation, and reception of literature and in turn, the impact of these borders on issues around cultural, linguistic, and national belonging. Introducing an innovative approach to the study of multilingualism in literature, this collection will be of particular interest to students and researchers in literary studies, cultural studies, and multilingualism.
The IASS (International Association for Scandinavian Studies) is the international organization for the research of Nordic literature, culture and linguistics. Since 1956 the IASS conference has been organized every other year. In 2016, the 31th IASS conference took place in Groningen (Netherlands). This 2016 conference revolved around the 21st century as an era characterized by dynamics with different implications. These ongoing global transitions are reflected in the humanities; the dichotomy between centre and periphery has invaded the literary discourse. In many small language areas, more translated literature is being published than literature written in the national language. This implies that cultural mediators play a major role in the production of literature. Their efforts are made visible in a transnational approach to the history of literature.
The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature explores the interplay between the domination of nature and the oppression of women, as well as liberatory alternatives, bringing together essays from leading academics in the field to facilitate cutting-edge critical readings of literature. Covering the main theoretical approaches and key literary genres of the area, this volume includes: • Examination of ecofeminism through the literatures of a diverse sampling of languages, including Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish; native speakers of Tamil, Vietnamese, Turkish, Slovene, and Icelandic. • Analysis of core issues and topics, offering innovative approaches to interpreting literature, including: activism, animal studies, cultural studies, disability, gender essentialism, hegemonic masculinity, intersectionality, material ecocriticism, postcolonialism, posthumanism, postmodernism, race, and sentimental ecology. • Surveys key periods and genres of ecofeminism and literary criticism, including chapters on Gothic, Romantic, and Victorian literatures, children and young adult literature, mystery, and detective fictions, including interconnected genres of climate fiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and distinctive perspectives provided by travel writing, autobiography, and poetry. This collection explores how each of ecofeminism’s core concerns can foster a more emancipatory literary theory and criticism, now and in the future. This comprehensive volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of literature, ecofeminism, ecocriticism, gender studies, and the environmental humanities.
Mapping Minor/Small and World Literatures: Periphery and Center makes a declarative intervention in debates about world literature, redefining the boundaries between the center and periphery to rejuvenate long-established assumptions about significance and insignificance. In this book, African American literature (emerging from the often overlooked pink periphery, a cramped space of minor literature), works from the Faroe Islands, Basque literature, First Nation Canadian literature, Western narratives about peripheral China, Kurdish literature, the ultraminor literary space of Antigua, the 'favela' of Brazilian literature, as well as the hyperlocal narratives of Australian and New Zealand literature are all studied for their meaningful role within the world literary system. Additionally, working-class writing and the literary contributions of individuals on the margins of their own societies are given a voice, ensuring that the world literary space does not merely represent the perspectives of dominant elites. Unlike other descriptions of world literature, which have frequently allowed the grandeur and breadth of the global to overshadow the imperative for authentic literary biodiversity, this anthology, featuring contributions from diverse scholars representing various countries and backgrounds, actively deconstructs the structures of power and domination inherent in Western-European-centered world literature, minor literature, and small literature.
Can the recovery of women's contributions to literary culture be compared to a salvage operation? In that case, for what purpose? The essays in this book explore the role of women writers and readers in Nordic literary culture within a European and worldwide network of literary exchange. Specifically, they consider the transnational transmission of women's literary texts during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Textual exchange is as a migratory practice entailing processes of textual export, import, translation, reception and dissemination across national boundaries. These essays are case studies that not only explore the various transformations that happen when texts migrate from one cultural and linguistic framework to another, but also highlight the gendered nature of such transformations and the significance of transcultural exchange for perceptions of gender. Spanning from digital humanities and world literature, libraries and reading societies to the transnational reception of authors such as Selma Lagerlöf, Simone de Beauvoir and Monika Fagerholm, the essays contribute to an exciting and expanding field of humanities research. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research.