Joep Leerssen Research Articles

Joep Leerssen’s imagology and Yuri Lotman’s semiotic ideas

Having emerged as an independent branch of literary studies, today, imagology is represented by various schools. Its most prominent representative, Joep Leerssen, has developed a holistic version of the imagological theory, which, in many respects, correlates with constructivist approaches to understanding nationalism. The main categories of imagology as interpreted by this school are ethnic stereotype, ethnotype, category of the imaginary, non-falsifiability, imagotypes, imaginary discourse, auto-image, hetero-image, context, common places, imagemes, and the representativeness trap.From the point of view of semiology, ethnic stereotypes, which are studied by imagology, are the signs by means of which their bearer interprets for himself the sphere of interaction between people, in which they act as representatives of certain nations. Thus, the imagosphere can be interpreted as part of the semeosphere, distinguished from it only by problem-thematic rather than by structural-functional features. Accordingly, many of Yuri Lotman’s semiotic ideas can potentially be productive for research in the field of imagology.Imagologists and semiologists analyze the same works of literature and formulate different conclusions largely because they use different types of the scientific discourse in the categories of which they conduct their research. However, in essence, these conclusions are often not so different, at least not mutually exclusive.

Networks, Narratives and Nations. Transcultural Approaches to Cultural Nationalism in Modern Europe and Beyond ed. by Marjet Brolsma et al

Reviewed by: Networks, Narratives and Nations. Transcultural Approaches to Cultural Nationalism in Modern Europe and Beyond ed. by Marjet Brolsma et al Carmen Ardelean Networks, Narratives and Nations. Transcultural Approaches to Cultural Nationalism in Modern Europe and Beyond. Edited by Marjet Brolsma, Alex Drace-Francis, Krisztina Lajosi-Moore, Enno Maessen, Marleen Rensen, Jan Rock, Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez and Guido Snel. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022. Group identities are shaped by narratives and images in a variety of ways. These include the sharing of stories and images that are used to convey a sense of shared history, values and beliefs, which then help to strengthen the identity of a particular group. Through the use of these narratives and images, a group identity can be created, maintained or even strengthened, allowing groups and nations to form a sense of solidarity and belonging. To begin with, it is important to understand the concept of group identity—closely linked to the concept of social identity—and how it is formed. Group identity is the shared understanding of who one is as a member of a certain group, community or nation, and it is created through the shared experiences of that human structure. This shared identity then allows for a sense of belonging, solidarity and connection among its members. Through narratives and images, a group’s identity can be further shaped and reinforced in historical, social and psychological terms. On the one hand, narratives, or stories, are an important tool in creating and strengthening group identity. Through the sharing of stories, a group can create a sense of shared history, which then helps to build a stronger sense of identity. These stories can be passed down through generations, can be restructured or adapted to new conditions, their main purpose being to ensure continuity. On the other hand, postmodern narratives benefit from networking. Modern networking technology has allowed groups to form and strengthen identities in ways that were not possible before. Groups can connect in a matter of seconds, and can equally be influenced—positively or negatively—for the purpose of creating a stronger feeling of identity. Through networking, resources and ideas can be spread, in order to create a unified mindset. As mentioned in the introduction by Alex Drace-Francis, the topic of national and group identities has been a source of debate for decades. According to Drace-Francis, the purpose of this volume, including well documented opinions by a wide range of modern researchers, is to focus “on the networked, transnational nature of cultural nation-building processes in a comparative European and sometimes extra-European context.” Having as a focal point the works of Joep Leerssen and his breakthrough research into the topic of nationalism as a significant part of culture, and inclined to transnational influences, the authors whose contributions are included in this volume show us, as a reminder of Hofstede’s works of the 1980s, that there is much more to culture than what is commonly perceived. By applying a multi-faceted critical thinking approach to this issue, the authors grouped herein provide a daring, fresh perspective to Leerssen’s ideas. Indeed, in today’s scholarly environment, it is becoming increasingly important to apply critical thinking to our cultural narratives and images. We are bombarded with an ever-increasing amount of information from all angles, and it is easy to become overwhelmed and accept the status quo without question. However, the authors included in this volume took it upon themselves to critically analyze various cultural narratives—both European and extra-European—as well as the images adopted by various communities, in a synchronic, as well as diachronic approach aimed at a deeper understanding of the world around us, based on facts and strong evidence. This is especially important in our current media-saturated environment, where bias and manipulation create fake cultural images for commercial gain. The authors of the essays in this book deny such a perspective by applying thorough research and by emphasizing the context in which all relevant narratives and images are produced for the benefit of the culture that they belong to or from a transcultural perspective. The underlying message of cultural narratives and images is: what...

Cultural Images of the East and West in Elif Shafak's Novels

This article is intended to discuss the images of the East and West as they are portrayed in Elif Shafak’s novels, with emphasis on the ethnic cliches and stereotypes which are often engendered in and disseminated through fiction. More specifically, it examines how the novelist depicts Turkish and Oriental culture, often in contrast with its Western counterpart, through the complex and insightful images she skillfully creates. The theoretical part of the article relies on the seminal works of imagologists such as Joep Leerssen and Manfred Beller, who have laid the foundations for the study of cultural images, with emphasis on their shifting, dynamic and context-dependent nature, as well as on David Katan’s logical levels of culture, which are used as a starting point for the analysis of the similarities and differences between the East and the West as represented in Shafak’s work.

Book Review: Joep Leerssen & Eric Storm (eds.), World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities. International Exhibitions as Cultural Platforms, 1851–1958

Book Review of Joep Leerssen & Eric Storm (eds.), World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities. International Exhibitions as Cultural Platforms, 1851–1958

Parnell and His Times ed. by Joep Leerssen (review)

Parnell and His Times ed. by Joep Leerssen (review)

Parnell and his Times, ed. Joep Leerssen

Parnell and his Times, ed. Joep Leerssen

The Fabulous Journeys of Alice and Pinocchio: Exploring their Parallel Worlds

The Fabulous Journeys of Alice and Pinocchio: Exploring their Parallel Worlds

From “German Wolfhounds” to “Ordinary People”

Abstract The image of the perpetrator in Israeli Holocaust fiction changed fundamentally in the mid-1980s: from one-dimensional Nazi beasts, typical of earlier Israeli writing, to humanized individuals, whose vulnerability and multidimensionality may blur the divide between victims and victimizers. This development, which corresponds to similar patterns in other literatures (e.g., George Steiner’s Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.; Jonathan Littell’s Kindly Ones) has received relatively little critical attention, and it is discussed here through a close reading of major Israeli works of fiction—Ka-Tzetnik’s Salamandra, David Grossman’s See Under: Love, A. B. Yehoshua’s Mr. Mani—as well as more minor texts. Using theoretical work in narrative (E. M. Forster, James Phelan) and imagology (Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen on German national character), this article formulates the recent shift in modes of perpetrator characterization in terms of its poetics and its place in Israel’s literary history.

KANTOWSKIE WYBORY A DWUMITYCZNOŚĆ, CZYLI O PUNKCIE WYJŚCIA IMAGOLOGA

Artykuł składa się z czterech części. Pierwsza, Imagologia i Kant, przypomina o koncepcjach wiążącego imagologię z filozofią Immanuela Kanta Manfreda Bellera i Joepa Leerssena, który przypisuje imagologowi antyesencjalizm opozycyjny do esencjalizmu samych images. Druga część, Images a hermeneutyka, czyli Ricoeurowskie dodawanie/rozszerzanie zmierzające do Pełni przedstawia ten sposób poznawczego postępowania, który dodaje do siebie przeciwstawne koncepcje filozoficzne (Nietzscheańsko-Freudowską i Kantowską), opierając się na odwołaniach do dwu mitów – Boga i Natury (reprezentujących arché i telos). Trzecia część, Images a konstrukcje. Kantowskie odejmowanie/zawężanie, czyli przejście w stronę Formy pokazuje, w jaki sposób Kant odrzuca wpisujące się w mit Natury, jego zdaniem patologiczne, aspekty rzeczywistości (dialektyka, przypadek, empiria itd.) lub człowieka (sen, emocje, spontaniczność), by uzasadnić i uznać za powszechnie obowiązujące te, które opierają się na micie Boga (i które istnienia tego mitu się też domagają). Czwarta część jest zbiorem pytań i odpowiedzi, dotyczących tego, dlaczego dwa wspomniane mity oraz ich relacje można uznać za podstawę kultury i porównywania jej dziedzin, jednocześnie zaś otwarte pozostawia pytanie o to, w jakich relacjach pozostają one na polu imagologii.

Taking the provinces seriously

Using France as a case-study, this essay calls for enhanced recognition of cultural variegation within nation states in the era of European Romantic nationalism. It outlines a new, integrated and comparative approach to the study of provincial music in a context where national centralisation is the norm. The situation in France, especially during the height of the ?provincial awakening? around 1900, is analysed in light of the ideas of Ivo Strecker and Joep Leerssen on regionalism and ethnic nationalism, and alongside broader questions of cultural decentralisation. Particular attention is drawn to the challenges posed by borderlands, by the intersection of cultural and political ideas, and by the dangers of false separations between high and low cultures at local level.

Flynn, Peter, et al. Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2016, 340 p

Contrary to the idea of following a precise conceptual plan in what concerns translation choices and beliefs, and to the detriment of traditional more prescriptive views on translation techniques, the possibility of intuition and creativity surface from contemporary critiques upon the matter. Such shift has not only bestowed translations with a deserved arena for them to perform their task, but has actually provided them with important tools for one to position him/herself socially and politically in what regards an issue that have always been social and political: the text. When I kidnap meaning from the original and suggest it actually belongs to every instance that happens to touch it, the autonomy inevitably directed by this process towards translator and reader ultimately grants both an opportunity to inflict a material and consistent influence on such meaning. That is, when I pose that meanings do not belong to the original, such meanings end up losing their status of “possessions” – and eventually one learns they do not belong to anyone at all. The question one might be asking is: why would this autonomy to transform necessarily change anything for those involved in the enterprise of translation? Well, it does change many things; not to say everything. As translators acknowledge the active role they play for the maintenance or alteration of certain narratives, their task is no longer taken as a simple – uncontrollable – code transferring; i.e., translators are turned from rewriters into writers, from carriers of old meanings into inventers of new ones. In the book Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology (2015) – edited by Peter Flynn, Luc van Doorslaer, and Joep Leerssen – the authors and compiled articles address the fact that it is only through a more autonomous notion of translation that questionable cultural aspects, as well as prejudiced images of this or that tradition, might be finally overcome.

The Secret of the Celts Revisited

What makes the Celts so popular today? Anton van Hamel and Joep Leerssen published on the popularity of imagery connected with pre-Christian Celts, Van Hamel seeing the holistic worldview and Leerssen mysteriousness as appealing characteristics. They explain waves of ‘Celtic revival’ that washed over Europe as reaction and romanticising movements that search for alternatives from contemporaneous dominant culture. Each period has produced its modernized versions of the Celtic past. Besides periodical heightened interest in things Celtic, Van Hamel saw a permanent basis of attraction in Celtic texts, which accommodate ‘primitive’ and romantic mentalities. This article also analyses Celtic Christianity (through The Celtic Way by Ian Bradley and The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther de Waal) on the use of Celtic texts and imagery of Celtic culture. Two case studies are done (on the use of the Old-Irish Deer’s Cry and the description of a nineteenth-century Scottish ritual). Both the current search for ‘spirituality’ and the last wave of ‘Celtic revival’ seem to have sprung from a reaction movement that criticizes dominant religion/culture and seek inspiration and precursors in an idealized past. The roots of this romantic search for a lost paradise are, however, also present in medieval Irish literature itself. Elements such as aesthetics, imaginative worlds and the posited lost beauty of pre-industrial nature and traditional society are keys in explaining the bridges among the gap between ‘us’ and the Celts. The realization that Celtic languages are endangered or dead heightens the feeling of loss because they are the primary gates towards this lost way of (thinking about) life.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

A New Field:History of Humanities

A New Field:<i>History of Humanities</i>

Historische roman en nationale romantiek in Nederland, 1790-1899

Abstract The historical novel and national romanticism in the Netherlands, 1790-1899According to Joep Leerssen ‘national romanticism’ is defined by the artist’s goal (a national political cause) and his means (inspiration is found in the past and present of the nation). This movement spread rapidly through Europe between 1820 and 1870, and Leerssen considers the ‘long tail’ and ‘the banal’ of ‘national romanticism’ mainly as phenomena of the twentieth century. As the history of national romanticism and the historical novel seem inseparable, this article compares Leerssen’s definition and periodization with data on the historical novels that appeared in the Netherlands between 1790 and 1899. The data affirms Leerssen’s periodization, but only with respect to the leading (protestant bourgeois) cultural class. An examination of all historical novels in the period 1790-1899 shows that the historical novel as consumer art was not restricted to the ‘the long tail’ and that around 1870 a Catholic form of national romanticism came into being. In a nutshell, the history of the historical novel in the nineteenth century reflects fundamental changes in Dutch political ideals in the same period: from homogeneous nation state to ‘unity in diversity’.

Joep Leerssen and Ann Rigney, eds. Commemorating Writers in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Nation-Building and Centenary Fever. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 320 pages.

Article Joep Leerssen and Ann Rigney, eds. Commemorating Writers in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Nation-Building and Centenary Fever. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 320 pages. was published on November 1, 2015 in the journal arcadia (volume 50, issue 2).

Й. Леерссен о репрезентации национальных образов в системе культуры

The article is devoted to the imagological concept developed by Joep Leerssen, Professor at the University of Amsterdam, an approach based on the culturological study of the national discourse. The focus of Leerssen’s approach is his idea of the national image as a mental construct, an idea which does away with essentialist traditions, as well as with philological and anthropological determinism in construing the nation. Speaking of the promising aspects of imagology, Leerssen mentions the study of the dynamics of imagemes as opposing structural constituents of the national image, and also of the autoimages preserved in the nations’ cultural and historical memories. According to the Dutch scholar, imagology will enrich the humanities, especially the ones studying identity construction, and provide a wider and more complete view of the mechanisms of connections between literatures in the context of interacting national cultures.

The Imagological Approach to Lithuanian and Latvian Contemporary Émigré Narratives

A newly deployed identity, separated from its natural location, loses its solid national or ethnic status and hybridizes, acquiring features of the new context. Employing the concepts of self-image, imageme and counter-image introduced by contemporary literary imagology (Joep Leerssen), the article focuses on the 21st century Lithuanian and Latvian emigre prose to provide an overview of a dislocated tradition and images that encode the continuity or transformation of the national identity. The aim of the discussion is to raise the issue of the specifics of the Baltic ethnic and national identity in the changing mobile world. The focus of the analysis is not on the social, but exceptionally on literary images, which are classified into topical image groups: ethnic images, Eastern European projections and exoticism as an extension of domestic identity. Literary representations bear witness to the atrophy of ethnic and national consciousness, shifting expression of Baltic images, and their creative employment in the new contexts. Applied to the norms and standards of the new (e) migrant society, traditional ethnic and national imagery often looses the common Baltic implications and offers other arguments for self-identification. The inherited patterns of Soviet mentality determine a similar structure of the characters’ consciousness, identical personal values and motivational mechanisms that bear witness to a common stock type “Eastern European”. This is a certain social type with the entire preconceived repertoire of stereotypical images describing the subject of post-Soviet descent. This subject appears in emigre narratives as the inferior figure of the labourer with low self-esteem, a person of no reputation guided by amorality and aggressiveness. Although, at first glance, all the personal and national characteristics of the homo post-sovieticus appear to be negatively charged, every unfavourable estimation contains the positive counterpart of the imageme that can be activated at any given moment (e. g., passivity/faithfulness, humility/patience, primitiveness/honesty, etc.). Baltic literary works produced in more remote and exotic countries (China, Turkey and Georgia), reveal the Baltic identity as European (more specifically – Northern) as opposed to Russian or the Soviet one, and demonstrate the authors’ propensity for embracing it. Common representational cliches of a distant culture as the incomprehensible and foreign Other and of the Orient as the cradle of despotism are being disproved. The images under discussion reflect Lithuanian and Latvian collective representations and the key changes happening in the national identity of the Baltic nations in emigration.

The Public Sphere and Eighteenth-century Ireland

The Public Sphere and Eighteenth-century Ireland Wes Hamrick Many professional scholars, and others who have followed the lively debates regarding Irish history in recent years, would be surprised to realize that several decades of historical revisionism have yet to free Irish Studies from a number of the orthodoxies established by Daniel Corkery’s The Hidden Ireland in 1924.1 Corkery’s pioneering study of Irish-language poetry depicted eighteenth-century Gaelic Ireland as almost uniformly rural, Catholic, and poor, with an outlook that was thoroughly premodern. Largely cut off from the culture of the Ascendency, Corkery’s Gaelic Ireland was defined, above all, by its tenacious adherence to the Irish language. Though scholars now look askance at this crudely drawn picture, it nonetheless formed the cultural bedrock of official versions of national history in the newly established Free State.2 Remarkably, this same paradigm has taken on renewed prominence in the recent debate sparked by Joep Leerssen’s controversial 2002 pamphlet, Hidden Ireland, Public Sphere. Referring to the “pre-modern attitudes” of the Gaelic literary tradition, Leerssen argues that the “hidden Ireland” had no public sphere, only “countless pockets of private spheres” where news circulated “by way of rumour and gossip, or the odd broadsheet at best.”3 Such a view sits uneasily with the work of such scholars as Breandán Ó Buachalla, Éamonn Ó Ciardha, and Vincent Morley, which has shown that Gaelic Ireland was in fact highly politicized during the eighteenth century.4 [End Page 87] Indeed, Leerssen’s pamphlet sits at the center of a vigorous debate that has emerged in recent years over the status of the Irish language during the eighteenth century. For example, James Kelly and Ciarán Mac Murchaidh, the editors of Irish and English: Essays on the Irish Linguistic and Cultural Frontier, 1600–1900 (2012), as well as Lesa Ní Mhunghaile, one of the contributors to that volume, have called Leerssen’s view “untenable” in light of widespread bilingualism and significant interaction between the two languages.5 In turn, Leerssen’s review of Irish and English in a recent issue of Béaloideas contends that some of the essays in Irish and English “travesty” his main arguments and that the volume as a whole “tilts at windmills of its own fabrication.”6 Underlying this sharp exchange of words, though, is an important debate that potentially leads to a major reconfiguration of our understanding of Gaelic Ireland, particularly its relationship to English-language print culture, to the Ascendency, and to modernity. Within this debate, scholars have genuine points of disagreement in a number of areas—for instance, whether Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the bourgeois public sphere is applicable to Gaelic Ireland’s largely oral and manuscript culture. Scholars also disagree on the extent to which bilingualism and the interaction between Irish and English allowed Gaelic Ireland to form something like public opinion in the modern sense. However, there are also areas where scholars have simply misunderstood each other because of confusion over terminology. Such concepts as “access to print” as well as the concept of the “public sphere” have been defined in various ways, often leading to starkly different conclusions. In addition, the debate has highlighted how little scholars understand about particular phenomena, such as the precise way that print interacted with manuscript literature in Irish, the degree to which Irish-language political poetry reflected the political consciousness of ordinary people, or the extent to which the Volunteer movement of the 1770s and 1780s—a formative period in Anglo-Irish politics—impacted political life in Gaelic Ireland. Further investigation in these areas should lead to new insights on the question of the Irish language and the public sphere, while also changing our understanding of other topics in Irish Studies, including the language shift and the development of Irish nationalism. The concept of the public sphere was first developed by Habermas to describe [End Page 88] the newly democratic forms of public debate that, in his view, emerged from the salons of late-seventeenth century Paris and the newspaper and coffee house culture of eighteenth-century London. The public sphere is the realm of discourse in which members civil society come together...

Rytų europiečio sindromas šiuolaikinės (e)migracijos naratyvuose

Employing the notion of imagology as a general imitational principle in modern-day society (Milan Kundera) and the concepts of hetero-image, self-image, and imageme introduced by literary imagology (Joep Leerssen), this article focuses on literary representations of Eastern Europeans in the latest wave Lithuanian, Latvian and Bulgarian émigré narratives. The selected narrative corpus includes four émigré novels generated in Britain: Vilis Lacitis’ Stroika with the view to London (2010), Alek Popov’s Mission in London (2012), Aleksandra Fomina’s We visited the island yesterday (2011) and Zita Čepaitė’s The breeze of London (2013).In discussing several manifestations of emigrants from the post-communist bloc, the author of the article concludes that the inherited patterns of Soviet mentality determine a similar structure of characters‘ consciousness, identical personal values, and motivational mechanisms that bear witness to a common stock type “Eastern European”. This is a certain social type with an entire preconceived repertoire of stereotypical images describing a subject of post-Soviet descent. This subject appears in émigré narratives as an inferior working-class figure with low self-esteem, a person of no reputation guided by amorality and aggressiveness. People from the former Soviet bloc perceive themselves and are perceived by local British (Western European) natives mostly in negative terms. Although, at first glance, all the personal and national characteristics of homo postsovieticus appear to be negatively charged, in every unfavorable estimation there lay a positive imageme counterpart that can be activated at any given moment (e. g., passiveness/faithfulness, self-humiliation/patience, primitiveness/honesty, etc.).