"The Politics of Literary History"

Palgrave Macmillan Cham has published "The Politics of Literary History", a multi-year study on the historiography of literature in Latvia, the Czech Republic, Finland and Russia after 1990.

This book looks at literary historiography in Russia, Latvia, the Czech Republic and Finland, focusing on how seismic shifts in state politics and ideology after 1990 changed the writing of national literary histories in these countries. While Russia saw a return to a more nationalist way of thinking about literature and a new emphasis on Orthodox religion after the fall of the Soviet Union, the opposite is true for Latvia, the Czech Republic and Finland. In these countries, literary historiography fosters connections between Western scholarship and literatures written in the national language and engages with questions such as transnationalism, minorities, culture and power, and the cultural construction of identities. This book scrutinizes the different ways in which the construction of national, cultural and European identities has occurred in and through the literary historiography of North-Eastern Europe in the last few decades.

Seven literary scholars have contributed to the book, highlighting and presenting the paradigms of literary history in their countries. The chapter "Latvian Literature as an Ideologically and Politically Contested Terrain: Literary Historiography Between Foreign Rule, Nationalism, and Comparative Perspectives" was written in collaboration with ILFA researchers Benedikts Kalnačs and Māra Grudule. It focuses on the traditions of Latvian literary history writing from 1812 to the beginning of the 21st century.

More information here.

Last time modified: 20.02.2024 14:55:29