At the Crossroads of the East and the West: The Problem of Borderzone in Russian and Central European Cultures

Abstract

This edited collection stemmed from the Russian-Hungarian interdisciplinary research project “Russia and Hungary at the Crossroads of East and West Cultures: the Problem of Borderzone”, examines the concept of the East and the West in Russian and Central European 20th-century cultures. The volume examines the key problems of the poetics of the so-called cultural borderzone as well as real / imaginary boundaries and forms of national self-identification in language, literature, art, and social thought. The contributors are Russian and Hungarian scholars as well as both established and young researchers from Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Croatia, Switzerland, and Estonia. The authors develop their ideas and methodology drawing from the heritage of Russian formalism and structuralist thought. The book is intended for philologists, literary scholars, and experts in a wide range of other humanitarian disciplines.