Download or read book A History of European Literature written by Walter Cohen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-19 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walter Cohen argues that the history of European literature and each of its standard periods can be illuminated by comparative consideration of the different literary languages within Europe and by the ties of European literature to world literature. World literature is marked by recurrent, systematic features, outcomes of the way that language and literature are at once the products of major change and its agents. Cohen tracks these features from ancient times to the present, distinguishing five main overlapping stages. Within that framework, he shows that European literatures ongoing internal and external relationships are most visible at the level of form rather than of thematic statement or mimetic representation. European literature emerges from world literature before the birth of Europe — during antiquity, whose Classical languages are the heirs to the complex heritage of Afro-Eurasia. This legacy is later transmitted by Latin to the various vernaculars. The uniqueness of the process lies in the gradual displacement of the learned language by the vernacular, long dominated by Romance literatures. That development subsequently informs the second crucial differentiating dimension of European literature: the multicontinental expansion of its languages and characteristic genres, especially the novel, beginning in the Renaissance. This expansion ultimately results in the reintegration of European literature into world literature and thus in the creation of todays global literary system. The distinctiveness of European literature is to be found in these interrelated trajectories.
Download or read book Literature for Europe written by Theo d'. Haen and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2009 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Literature for Europe? leading scholars from around Europe reflect on the role played by literature, and by the study of literature, in the constant re-negotiation and re-construction of cultural identities in Europe implied by the accession to the European Union, in the early years of the twenty-first century, of fifteen new member states, with the accession of a number of Balkan states impending, and Turkey waiting in the wings, while at the same time transatlantic relations of the EU to the USA are hotly debated, in politics as in culture, China and India awake as economic giants, and globalization is upon us. At the same time, two of the earliest signatories to the treaties eventually leading to the European Union rejected a proposal for a European Constitution, and linguistic, religious, and ethnic dividing lines show even in some of Europe's oldest nation states. How do literary texts, genres, and forms, thinking about them and teaching them, respond to and shape ongoing processes of European self-understanding in our era of globalization? The volume seeks to answer these questions by charting key developments in a number of fields crucial to the emergence of a European common literary "space" literature and cultural value systems, literature and cultural memory, literary history, translation, the impact of the new media and the information age on matters of literature and identity, and the impact of the postcolonial. Literature for Europe? is a thought-provoking tour d'horizon of cutting-edge developments in the relationship between literary studies and "the matter of Europe," and suggesting an exciting agenda for literary studies in Europe. It will be of interest to everyone working in European studies and/or European literature.
Download or read book Tradition Literature and Politics in East Central Europe written by Carl Tighe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Milan Kundera warned that in in the states of East-Central Europe, attitudes to the west and the idea of ‘Europe’ were complex and could even be hostile. But few could have imagined how the collapse of communism and membership of the EU would confront these countries with a life that was suddenly and disconcertingly ‘modern’ and which challenged sustaining traditions in literature, culture, politics and established views on identity. Since the countries of East-Central Europe joined the European Union in 2004 the politicians and oppositionists of the centre-left, who once led the charge against communism, have often been forced to give way to right-wing, authoritarian, populist governments. These governments, while keen to accept EU finance, have been determined to present themselves as protecting their traditional ethno-national inheritance, resisting ‘foreign interference’, stemming the ‘gay invasion’, halting ‘Islamic replacement’ and reversing women’s rights. They have blamed Communists, liberals, foreigners, Jews and Gypsies, revised abortion laws, tampered with their constitutions to control the Justice system and taken over the media to an astonishing degree. By 2019, amid calls for the suspension of their voting rights, both Poland and Hungary had been taken to the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament and had begun to explore ways to put conditions on future EU funding. This book focuses on the interface between tradition, literature and politics in east-central Europe, focusing mainly on Poland but also Hungary and the Czech Republic. It explores literary tradition and the role of writers to ask why these left-liberals, who were once ubiquitous in the struggles with communism, are now marginalised, often reviled and almost entirely absent from political debate. It asks, in what ways the advent of capitalism ‘normalised’ literature and what the consequences might be? It asks whether the rise of chauvinism is ‘normal’ in this part of the world and whether the literary traditions that helped sustain independent political thought through the communist years now, instead of supporting literature, feed nationalist opinion and negative attitudes to the idea of ‘Europe’.
Download or read book The Unbearable Lightness of Being written by Milan Kundera and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — People In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples, a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine. This magnificent novel is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.
Download or read book Early Printed Narrative Literature in Western Europe written by Bart Besamusca and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume are concerned with early printed narrative texts in Western Europe. The aim of this book is to consider to what extent the shift from hand-written to printed books left its mark on narrative literature in a number of vernacular languages. Did the advent of printing bring about changes in the corpus of narrative texts when compared with the corpus extant in manuscript copies? Did narrative texts that already existed in manuscript form undergo significant modifications when they began to be printed? How did this crucial media development affect the nature of these narratives? Which strategies did early printers develop to make their texts commercially attractive? Which social classes were the target audiences for their editions? Around half of the articles focus on developments in the history of early printed narrative texts, others discuss publication strategies. This book provides an impetus for cross-linguistic research. It invites scholars from various disciplines to get involved in an international conversation about fifteenth- and sixteenth-century narrative literature.
Download or read book Landmarks in Classical Literature written by Philip Gaskell and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing the context of time and place as well as discussing the translations,Landmarks in Classical Literaturesurveys the most influential authors of ancient Greece and Rome. Part of the three-book series,Landmarks in European Literature, which presents the major authors of European literature and their works, from ancient times until the 20th century, this volume is designed for general readers and students, looking for additional guidance in their reading or wishing to understand the context in which these fascinating works were written. Helping and encouraging readers to explore and enjoy the European literary heritage, theLandmarks in European Literatureseries includeLandmarks in Continental European Literature,Landmarks in Classical Literature, andLandmarks in English Literature, all of which will prove valuable at any library supporting literary studies.
Download or read book Essays on European Literature written by Ernst Robert Curtius and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the reputation of the great German scholar Ernst Robert Curtius was firmly established for English and American readers by the translation of European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, much of his work is still unknown to them. These twenty-four essays, written over a period of nearly thirty years, range widely in time and scope and consider some of the greatest figures in European literature, among them Virgil, Goethe, Balzac, Joyce, Eliot, Ortega y Gasset, and Hesse. The essays show the qualities that made Curtius one of the great critics of our age: his lucid, penetrating mind, his comprehensive erudition, his cosmopolitan outlook, and above all his passionate concern for European culture. Like T. S. Eliot, the subject of one of his finest essays, Curtius believed in an ideal order, a cultural unity of the West. The unifying element in all these essays is a concern to insure the conservation and continuance of European humanistic culture. For him this culture consisted of the literary heritage of Greece and Rome, developed and enriched by the Christian civilization of the Middle Ages. Consequently he selected for discussion those poets and writers who have been conscious of the unity of these two European currents and who have striven to maintain it in our time. As he ranged freely through the languages and literatures of all Western cultures, Curtius himself did much to preserve this tradition, to demonstrate its relevance, and insure its continuity. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Europe and Europeanness in Early Modern Latin Literature written by Isabella Walser-Bürgler and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of European integration goes back to the early modern centuries (c. 1400–1800), when Europeans tried to set themselves apart as a continental community with distinct political, religious, cultural, and social values in the face of hitherto unseen societal change and global awakening. The range of concepts and images ascribed to Europeanness in that respect is well documented in Neo-Latin literature, since Latin constituted the international lingua franca from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In Europe and Europeanness in Early Modern Latin Literature Isabella Walser-Bürgler examines the most prominent concepts of Europe and European identity as expressed in Neo-Latin sources. It is aimed at both an interested general audience and a professional readership from the fields of Latin studies, early modern history, and the history of ideas.
Download or read book Gypsies in European Literature and Culture written by V. Glajar and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-04-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces representations of "Gypsies" that have become prevalent in the European imagination and culture and influenced the perceptions of Roma in Eastern and Western European societies.
Download or read book Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture written by Vedrana Veličković and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture: Imagining New Europe provides a comprehensive study of the way in which contemporary writers, filmmakers, and the media have represented the recent phenomenon of Eastern European migration to the UK and Western Europe following the enlargement of the EU in the 21st century, the social and political changes after the fall of communism, and the Brexit vote. Exploring the recurring figures of Eastern Europeans as a new reservoir of cheap labour, the author engages with a wide range of both mainstream and neglected authors, films, and programmes, including Rose Tremain, John Lanchester, Marina Lewycka, Polly Courtney, Dubravka Ugrešić, Kapka Kassabova, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Mike Phillips, It’s a Free World, Gypo, Britain’s Hardest Workers, The Poles are Coming, and Czech Dream. Analyzing the treatment of Eastern Europeans as builders, fruit pickers, nannies, and victims of sex trafficking, and ways of resisting the stereotypes, this is an important intervention into debates about Europe, migration, and postcommunist transition to capitalism, as represented in multiple contemporary cultural texts.
Download or read book Metamorphosis and Other Stories written by Franz Kafka and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-02-26 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant new translation of Kafka’s best-known work, published for the 125th anniversary of his birth This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka’s works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; Meditation, a collection of his earlier studies; The Judgement, written in a single night of frenzied creativity; The Stoker, the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, The Aeroplanes at Brescia, Kafka’s eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka’s literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.
Download or read book Writing Europe written by Ursula Keller and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-10 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we mean by Europe? Thirty-three renowned authors from 33 European countries attempt an answer-in serious, ironic, skeptical, or optimistic tones. Their essays, written for the symposium held at the Literaturhaus Hamburg in 2003, reflect the astonishing diversity of European cultures. Not only are the style and experience of the individual authors remarkable for their distinctiveness, but their perspectives and views also appear to have little in common-at first glance.
Download or read book Lateness and Modern European Literature written by Ben Hutchinson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern European literature has traditionally been seen as a series of attempts to assert successive styles of writing as 'new'. In this groundbreaking study, Ben Hutchinson argues that literary modernity can in fact be understood not as that which is new, but as that which is 'late'. Exploring the ways in which European literature repeatedly defines itself through a sense of senescence or epigonality, Hutchinson shows that the shifting manifestations of lateness since romanticism express modernity's continuing quest for legitimacy. With reference to a wide range of authors--from Mary Shelley, Chateaubriand, and Immermann, via Baudelaire, Henry James, and Nietzsche, to Val ry, Djuna Barnes, and Adorno--he combines close readings of canonical texts with historical and theoretical comparisons of numerous national contexts. Out of this broad comparative sweep emerges a taxonomy of lateness, of the diverse ways in which modern writers can be understood, in the words of Nietzsche, as 'creatures facing backwards'. Ambitious and original, Lateness and Modern European Literature offers a significant new model for understanding literary modernity.
Download or read book The Story Smuggler written by Georgi Gospodinov and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2024-02-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Some smuggle cigarettes, others alcohol - or weapons. Our contraband, being invisible, is more dangerous. Our contraband is undetectable by scanners. What we carry as concealed excess baggage is stories.' In this exquisite literary gem, Georgi Gospodinov, winner of the International Booker Prize, invites the reader on a winding journey through his own memories. He shows us a childhood under Communism, a particularly Bulgarian variety of melancholy, the freedom and thrills found in reading and writing, and the coming of age of one extraordinary writer. Ultimately, this profound, playful and deeply moving autobiographical text offers resounding proof of the power and importance of storytelling. TRANSLATED FROM THE BULGARIAN BY KRISTINA KOVACHEVA AND DAN GUNN
Download or read book Trafika Europe written by Andrew Singer and published by Penn State University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In volume 1 of Trafika Europe, Andrew Singer gathers choice offerings from the first year of the quarterly journal of the same name. These fourteen selections-from seven women and seven men, seven poets and seven fiction writers-represent languages across the Continent, from Shetland Scots and Occitan, Latvian and Polish, Armenian, Italian, Hungarian, German, and Slovenian to Faroese and Icelandic. With some of the most accomplished writing in new translation from Europe today, this volume opens a window onto some emerging contours of European identity. Former ASCAP director of photography Mark Chester complements the writing with sumptuous black-and-white photos. The contributors are Vincenzo Bagnoli, Ewa Chrusciel, Christine DeLuca, Mandy Haggith, Stefanie Kremser, Aurélia Lassaque, Wiesław Myśliwski, Jóanes Nielsen, Edvīns Raups, László Sárközi, Marko Sosič, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Nara Vardanyan, and Māra Zālīte.
Download or read book Roxolana in European Literature History and Culture written by Galina I. Yermolenko and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection is the first book-length scholarly study of the pervasiveness and significance of Roxolana in the European imagination. Roxolana, or "Hurrem Sultan," was a sixteenth-century Ukrainian woman who made an unprecedented career from harem slave and concubine to legal wife and advisor of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566). Her influence on Ottoman affairs generated legends in many a European country. The essays gathered here represent an interdisciplinary survey of her legacy; the contributors view Roxolana as a transnational figure that reflected the shifting European attitudes towards "the Other," and they investigate her image in a wide variety of sources, ranging from early modern historical chronicles, dramas and travel writings, to twentieth-century historical novels and plays. Also included are six European source texts featuring Roxolana, here translated into modern English for the first time. Importantly, this collection examines Roxolana from both Western and Eastern European perspectives; source material is taken from England, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Poland, and Ukraine. The volume is an important contribution to the study of early modern transnationalism, cross-cultural exchange, and notions of identity, the Self, and the Other.
Download or read book Europeana written by Patrik Ourednik and published by Deep Vellum Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the Great War through the Millennium Bug, 1999 through 1900, Dadaism through Scientology through Sierra Leonean bicycle riding and back, award-winning Czech author Patrik Ourednik explores the horror and absurdity of the twentieth century in an explosive deconstruction of historical memory. Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century opens on the beaches of Normandy in 1944, comparing the heights of different forces’ soldiers and considering how tall, long, or good at fertilizing fields the men’s bodies will be. Probing the depths of humanity and inhumanity, this is an account of history as it has never been told: “engaging, even frightening.” At once recreating and uncreating the twentieth century, Ourednik explores the connections across the decades between the disparate figures, events, and politics we thought we knew. Patrik Ourednik’s Europeana merits the author’s reputation as a giant of post-1989 Czech literature. Now translated into 33 languages, the book is a masterwork of cubism, a polymorphic monologue of statistics and movements and fine print and discoveries that evokes the deadpan absurdity of Kafka and the gallows humor of Hašek. Ourednik has created a mesmerizing, maddening account of the past, and his interrogation of “truth” and objectivity resonates now more than ever.
