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Last update:
9 February 2010

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History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe

Junctures and disjunctures in the 19th and 20th centuries

Volume I

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Edited by Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer
Virginia Commonwealth University / University of Amsterdam

2004. xx, 648 pp.
Publishing status: Available

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978 90 272 3452 0 / EUR 198.00
978 1 58811 493 8 / USD 297.00
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978 90 272 9553 8 / EUR 198.00 / USD 297.00
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National literary histories based on internally homogeneous native traditions have significantly contributed to the construction of national identities, especially in multicultural East-Central Europe, the region between the German and Russian hegemonic cultural powers stretching from the Baltic states to the Balkans. History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, which covers the last two hundred years, reconceptualizes these literary traditions by de-emphasizing the national myths and by highlighting analogies and points of contact, as well as hybrid and marginal phenomena that traditional national histories have ignored or deliberately suppressed. The four volumes of the History configure the literatures from five angles: (1) key political events, (2) literary periods and genres, (3) cities and regions, (4) literary institutions, and (5) real and imaginary figures. The first volume, which includes the first two of these dimensions, is a collaborative effort of more than fifty contributors from Eastern and Western Europe, the US, and Canada.The four volumes of the History comprise the first volume in the new subseries on Literary Cultures.


Table of contents

Preface by the General Editor of the Literary History Project
Editors’ Preface
Note on Documentation and Translation
In Preparation
General introduction
Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer
Geography and borders
Paul Robert Magocsi
Part I: Nodes of political time
1989
From resistance to reformulation
Marcel Cornis-Pope
1989 in Poland: Continuity and Caesura
Włodimierz Bolecki
Reversals of the postmodern and the late Soviet simulacrum in the Baltic Countries — with exemplifications from Estonian literature
Epp Annus and Robert Hughes
Models of literary and cultural identity on the margins of (post)modernity: The case of pre-1989 Romania
Monica Spiridon
Quoting instead of living: Postmodern literature before and after the changes in East-Central Europe
Péter Krasztev
1956/1968
Revolt, suppression, and liberalization in Post-Stalinist East-Central Europe
Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer
1948
Introduction: The Culture of Revolutionary Terror
Tomislav Z. Longinović, Dagmar Roberts, Tomas Venclova and Marcel Cornis-Pope
Romanian literature under Stalinism
Letiţia Guran and Alexandru Ştefan
The retraumatization of the 1948 communist purges in Yugoslav literary culture
Renata Jambrešić Kirin
Heritage and inheritors: The literary canon in totalitarian Bulgaria
Alexander Kiossev
1945
Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer
1918
Overview
John Neubauer
Women writers and the war experience: 1918 as transition
Margaret R. Higonnet
The footsteps of Gavrilo Princip: The 1914 Sarajevo assault in fiction, history, and three monuments
Guido Snel
Beyond Vienna 1900: Habsburg identities in Central Europe
Katherine Arens
The Great War as a monstrous carnival: Jaroslav Hašek’s Švejk
Veronika Ambros
Polish literature of World War I: Consciousness of a breakthrough
Dorota Kielak
1867/1878/1881
John Neubauer
1848
John Neubauer
1776/1789
Introduction
John Neubauer
The spirit of 1776: Polish and Dalmatian declarations of philosophical independence
Larry Wolff
The cultural legacy of empires in Eastern Europe
Svetlana Slapšak
The Jacobin Movement in Hungary (1792–95)
Vilmos Voigt
1789 and Bulgarian Culture
Inna Peleva
Part II: Histories of literary form
Shifting periods and trends
Between Classicism and Romanticism: The year 1820 in Polish literature
Roman Koropeckyj
From modernization to modernist literature
Péter Krasztev
Czech Decadence
Robert B. Pynsent
The Avant-garde in East-Central European literature
Endre Bojtar
Shifting genres
Literary reportage: Between and beyond art and fact
Diana Kuprel
Gardens of the mind, places for doubt: Fictionalized autobiography in East-Central Europe
Guido Snel
Subversion and self-assertion: The role of Kotliarevshchyna in Russian-Ukrainian literary relations
George G. Grabowicz
Poeticizing prose in Croatian and Serbian Modernism
Miro Mašek
Stanislav Vinaver: Subversion of, or intervention in literary history?
Svetlana Slapšak
The birth of modern literary theory in East-Central Europe
Galin Tihanov
Polish poetry in the twentieth century
Arent van Nieukerken
Polish-Jewish literature: An outline
Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska and Antony Polonsky
Shifting perspectives and voices in the Romanian novel
Marcel Cornis-Pope
Forms of the Bulgarian novel
Boyko Penchev
The historical novel
Introduction
John Neubauer
The Hungarian historical novel in regional context
Sándor Hites
Recent historical novels and historiographic metafiction in the Balkans
Jasmina Lukić
The historical novel in Slovenian literature
Igor Grdina
The search for a modern, problematizing historical consciousness: Romanian historical fiction and family cycles
Marcel Cornis-Pope
The family novel in East-Central Europe: Illustrated with works by Isaac B. Singer and Włodzimierz Odojewski
Zofia Mitosek
Histories of multimedia constructions
Introduction
John Neubauer
National operas in East-Central Europe
John Neubauer
East-Central European cinema and literary history
Dina Iordanova
The silent tale of fury: Stalinism in Yugoslav cinema
Nevena Daković
Central Europe’s catastrophes on film: The case of István Szabó
Katherine Arens
Works cited
Index of East-Central-European Names: Volume 1


[...] this series will be by far the most comprehensive treatment of East-Central European literary culture ever attempted. [...] it will serve as the standard library reference on the region's culture for years to come.
Andrew Wachtel, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Northwestern University, IL, USA, in Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 83,3 (2005)

Die meisten Beiträge des ersten Bandes dieser Geschichte der literarischen Kulturen in Mittelosteuropa zeugen nicht nur von einer einheitlich abgestimmten methodisch-theoretischen Haltung der Autoren mehrerer Generationen, sondern auch von einer besonderen Sachkompetenz, wo der wissenschaftliche Diskurs die Informationsfülle mit einer tiefschürfenden Textlektüre zusammenfügt. Recht innovativ für eine Synthese dieser Art und die Artikel, die sich mit der Kunt multimedialer Kanäle (Oper und Film), sowie mit der ungewöhnlichen Verbreitung des Interesses für Literaturtheorie als eine ebenfalls überregionale Erscheinung beschäftigen. Auch wenn manche Fragen, wie die der ästhetischen Wertmaßstäbe in jener Ecke Europas, wo die als 'Provinzliteratur' geltende Heimatdichtung lange die Öffentlichket beherrscht hatte, oder sogar die einer Definition Mittelosteuropas noch keine endgültigen/überzeugenden Antworten finden, kann man doch wohl behaupten, daß gerade die ganze Reihe der Probleme, die hier aufgeworfen werden, dieses Werk als einen Meilenstein auf dem Weg zu einer neuen Qualität der internationalen Kooperation in der Literaturwissenschaft ausweist.
Andrei Corbea, in Arcadia Vol. 40:2 (2005)

History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe is a significant and monumental venture. [...] These volumes represent a significant and unique addition to the field. Never before have so numerous and so varied essays on the literary cultures of East-Central Europe been available in the English language. [...] History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe is a trendsetter and launches a novel route into the subject, one which scholars will want to follow and explore in the future.
Monika Baar, in Comparative Critical Studies, Vol. 4/3 (2007)