National Literary Histories Research Articles

Avant-Garde Austalgia

The Australian avant-garde raises all the contradictions of avant-garde studies in the present time. Antipodal vanguards in the 20th and 21st centuries would grapple with various aspects of Australian national history, being in various ways and times between East and West, the aligned and non-aligned, the political and geopolitical in poetics. The word “Australia,” from the Latin auster, contains meanings for “East.” Most importantly, the Antipodal vanguard exposes the contradictions of Australia’s imperial-colonial past and the struggle to overcome it. In this essay, I begin with the example of a “Dada” poem that comes from an Aboriginal rain dance, as well as the emergence of Dada poetics from the 1950s to the 1970s. Throughout I keep complexities of history and time at the forefront: what is the worth of a “marginal” national literary history of the avant-garde? What does the avant-garde mean outside Europe or the Euro-US? What can Australian Dadaism tell us about the future of avant-garde studies? Does the avant-garde always lead to nostalgia, or “Austalgia,” a hearkening after the past, as much as a striving toward the future?

Queer Decorum: An Episode on Translation and Marginalized Sexualities

The queer aspect of national literary histories has been traditionally obscured, and although it is gradually being recuperated, the impact of translation has been so far overlooked. Using the example of modernist fiction from England translated into Spanish and published in Argentina, I argue that translation smuggles, purposely misappropriates and resignifies alternative sexual desires and gender identities, opening spaces for local literatures to further explore these possibilities. Translation episodes from the 1940s and 1950s in Argentina are key to reconstructing the obscured history of literary queerness and I focus on one example that is perhaps the earliest, a translation of Denton Welch’s “When I Was Thirteen” by Jose Bianco of Sur magazine which appeared as “Cuando tenía trece años,” published in September 1944. Rather than isolated instances, such translations served to slowly transform the sentimental landscape of Argentine literature in a context where the popular imagination was prescriptively heteronormative. This article exhumes this little-known episode as one of the first cornerstones in a queer chapter of literary history in translation. Strictly related to depictions of homosexual desires, I propose “queer decorum” as an approach that affects translation strategies and decisions, subsequently affecting the translated text as a result and somehow making its publication possible.

PARADOKSI KNjIŽEVNE NACIONALNOSTI: SLUČAJ BRAĆE DIZDAR

This paper defines the term of literary nationality and explains its function in Serbian literary history and bibliography. It presents challenges in its application on the examples of literary and journalistic works of Hamid and Mak Dizdar, born brothers, of whom the first one was known as Serbian and the second one as Croatian author. Our research has shown that Hamid Dizdar started his literary and journalistic career as an author of Serbian nationality: he wrote in Serbian language, worked in papers with strong pro-Serbian political orientation and even entered polemics due to such choices. However, during World War II, when Sarajevo became an important center of the Independent State of Croatia, he declared himself as Croatian writer of Muslim religion and took part in fascist propaganda. There are also a few testimonies of his cooperation with both partisans and chetniks. In communist Yugoslavia, he declared himself as Serbian once more and was entrusted important task of running the newly established Historical archive in Sarajevo. His archival works inclined to Bosnian integralism. In the case of Mak Dizdar, works from the last five years of his life, from the book of poetry Stone Sleeper to the controversial “Marginalia about and around the language“, have been singled out as crucial in defining his literary nationality. It has been shown that only after the essay of Muhamed Filipović “Bosnian spirit in literature, what is that?“, in which Stone Sleeper was attributed as a milestone in the awakening of “Bosnian consciousness“, political views of Mak Dizdar had been radicalized, but only in his public engagement, not in his literary works. The outcome of this research is awareness that the Yugoslav period can be adequately described in national literary histories and bibliographies only by applying the term of literary nationality.

Serbian medieval poetry: 20th-century literary-historical and theoretical interpretations

This paper examines how national literary histories written in the twentieth century define medieval Serbian poetry. Grounded in the canon of Byzantine liturgical poetry and dedicated to cult practice, hymnography often did not conform to modern poetic principles, originality, and metrical form. Formalist approaches to poetry shaped the anthologies of Serbian medieval literature published in Yugoslavia in the 1960s. The editors transformed sequences from narrative prose into poetic texts, thus creating medieval poems. These cases draw attention to the importance of textual criticism and the social context in defining medieval literary genres. Exploring hymnography as a linguistic and liturgical event - a poem sung to an engaged audience - introduces new perspectives on its interpretation.

The Challenges of Writing a National Literary History in the Era of Transnationalism: Insights from a Peripheral Literary Space

It goes without saying that during the nineteenth and twentieth century literary historiography tries to define national identities. However, a methodological and paradigm shift occur at the beginning of the twenty-first century when, under the auspices of globalization and the emergence of world literature and transnational literary studies, literary historiography is re-thought as a collective and transnational project. Yet, the asymmetry of the world literary system affects literary historiography too. When it comes to this scholarly genre, the asymmetry is most visible in the fact that in the era of transnationalism, national histories are still written at the periphery. Given the aforementioned observation, this paper a) looks into the challenges of writing literary history in Romania in the age of world literature and transnational studies, and b) tries to explain why a national literary history is still needed and how it can change the way we think about Romanian literature. The starting point of this inquiry is represented by the publication of Mihai Iovănel’s Istoria literaturii române contemporane: 1990-2020 [History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990-2020]. In the context of the ‘transnational turn’ in literary studies, the attempt to write relevant national histories in a peripheral literary space such as Romania is faced, in my view, with two major challenges: 1) the fact that transnationalism manifests itself differently at the periphery and 2) the tradition of Romanian literary criticism and history. The former refers to the fact that unlike central literatures, where transnationalism is shaped to a large extent by migrant writers (those who enter these literatures), in Romanian literature it comprises exiled or migrant writers (those who left Romania and not vice versa) and, to a lesser extent, the literatures written by ethnic minorities. A comparative approach can cast light on this difference. For example, while the thirteenth volume of The Oxford English Literary History is dedicated entirely to migrant and bicultural writers, transnational histories concerning the peripheries, such as History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, focus on multiple literary spaces and therefore have a different approach to dealing with transnationalism. The latter challenge is represented, as shown by Iovănel, by the long-lasting tradition of the “principle of aesthetic autonomism”, which persists even in post-communist Romania. In this regard, this paper aims to show that Iovănel’s History… overcomes the above-mentioned hindrances of literary criticism and succeeds in offering an image of Romanian literature not as confined to its national boundaries but as part of the world literary system. Along with other significant scholarly works on Romanian literature as and in world literature, this project is a significant step towards re-thinking Romanian literature as a “literature of the world” (Terian 2015).

Writing of Contemporary National Literary History in Finland and Hungary – a Comparative Approach

The discourse on the writing of national literary histories is still in progress due to the postcolonial and transnational turn. In the frameworks of these literary theories, the meaning of national has been reshaped by focusing on the territorial, ethnic and language borders of contemporary literature. The theory of literary history writing had to face the issues of defining the phenomenon of migrant, emigrant and minority literature. A new Hungarian book titled Kik vagytok ti? Kötelező magyar irodalom – Újraélesztő könyv (Who Are You? Compulsory Hungarian Literature – A Revitalizing Book) (2019), also evoked a debate concerning the theoretical issues of Hungarian literary history writing. In this debate, not only the author and his critics confronted but also the critics with one another. By analysing the critiques and the author’s answers, the fundamental questions of the national literary history writing can be identified. With this metadiscursive approach, I aim to present the current state of Hungarian national literary history writing focusing on the minority and emigrant literature. I will compare the questions generated by the migrant literature in Finland to the issues emerging in the debate about Hungarian literature. This comparative and metadiscursive approach helps to understand the shaping process of the national literature in the dynamics of canonizations and marginalisation.

Poetry and British Nationalisms in the Bardic Eighteenth Century: Imagined Antiquities. Jeff Strabone. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pp. xv+351.

Poetry and British Nationalisms in the Bardic Eighteenth Century: Imagined Antiquities. Jeff Strabone. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pp. xv+351.

Entre avatares de la modernización y demandas políticas: la trayectoria de Ángel Julio Blanco

espanolAl igual que muchos otros escritores argentinos emergentes a lo largo del periodo de la «Organizacion Nacional» (1852-1880), Angel Julio Blanco (1830-1898), figura a la que esta dedicado este trabajo, no aparece registrado en las historias literarias nacionales. Se examinaran aqui una serie de testimonios proporcionados por el autor que reflexionan acerca de las condiciones bajo las que se desenvuelve la practica literaria de su tiempo. Su lucida conciencia provee un diagnostico de interes para la comprension del estado de cosas imperante en el ambito de las bellas letras que debieron afrontar quienes se iniciaban con la aspiracion de alcanzar reconocimiento. Consideraciones en torno a un conjunto de factores interdependientes ligados a la cuestion de la autoria y la coyuntura previa a la profesionalizacion, las caracteristicas del publico lector, la legitimacion dentro del circulo letrado, las concepciones de literatura y los modos de edicion y comercializacion reponen datos iluminadores para trazar un proceso de constitucion del campo literario argentino EnglishLike many other emerging Argentinean authors throughout the period known as «National Organization» (1852-1880), Angel Julio Blanco (1830-1898), the figure whom this paper deals with, is not registered in the national literary histories. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the relevance of a series of testimonies provided by Blanco, in which this Argentinian writer portrays his views regarding the literary practice of his times. His lucid perspective provides the reader with an interesting diagnosis of the Belle Lettres affair related to novice writers who were seeking recognition. It also brings about considerations on matters of authorship, on the context existing before professionalism, on characteristics of the reader, on legitimation among the literate circle, on literature production, editing and commercialization, all of which allows the reader to visualize a process of constitution of the Argentine literary field

Phantom Time: Literary History at the Edge of the Nation

Phantom Time: Literary History at the Edge of the Nation

Transnational Entanglements: Switzerland's Newly Emerging Literary Culture of the 1960s and the Anglophone World

In 1966, Emil Staiger, one of the most prominent literary scholars in literary studies of the postwar era, gave a talk on literature and the public. In his speech, which initiated what came to be known as the Zürcher Literaturstreit, Staiger developed a normative idea of literature as an agent of social cohesion. Around the same time, a new literary culture emerged in Switzerland, one which challenged Staiger's conception by exploring literature's critical potential. This article argues that this more modern direction taken by German Swiss literature was the result of transnational dynamics. Focusing on three examples of literature written by a new generation of Swiss authors (Walter, Federspiel, Bichsel), the article explores the various transnational alliances these authors built with modernist authors, mostly beyond the German‐speaking world, as a means of breaking with literary conventions. Leaving the logic of a national literary history behind, the article argues that seemingly local literary conflicts in 1960s Switzerland arose out of transnational dynamics.

Lost in the (National) Archive: The Modern Girl and the Magazine

This essay forms part of a special online issue of modernism/modernity focusing on methods of reading the magazine, using the case study of Canada's Western Home Monthly. It focuses on the way in which national, aesthetic, and sexual politics shape and exclude certain figures and stories from literary history, on the one hand; and on the opportunities afforded by studying magazines for revising traditional understandings of national literary history, and literary modernity, on the other. Once sidelined as merely commercial artefacts, magazines were long considered enemies of women and literary culture, both of which they promiscuously courted and entangled. More recent scholarship of magazines—beginning with important work of Margaret Beetham on Victorian periodials, and extending into the Modernist Journals Project, which inspired the Canadian equivalent Modern Magazines Project (out of which this essay cluster arises)—have highlighted their value in assisting scholars to understand what was widely read in its own time and place, in ways that force serious reconsiderations of the literary past. As Anne Ardis has observed, these reconsiderations have have important implications for understandings of literary modernism, more wedded as it typically is to the logics of cultural scarcity, and for broader understandings of literary modernity, including literary feminism. This essay is self-reflexive methods-based reading of one full year of this monthly periodical, October 1931-October 1932, which raises issues about how its stories featuring the Modern Girl (more typically known as the Flapper), challenge established understandings of literary, cultural, and feminist history of Canada.

Aliens in Love: Testing Bloom’s Theory of the Anxiety of Influence

The article aims to test the universality of Harold Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence. Underneath Bloom’s favourite tropes (Kabbalistic, psychoanalytic, Shakespearean, Miltonian, Blakean etc.) lies a diachronic system of misreading, which can be useful in analysing texts without any direct connections between them. By comparing two culturally distant but rhetorically similar prose texts, Friedebert Tuglas’s short story At the End of the World (1915) and Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris (1961), this article suggests that it is possible to overcome the accustomed boundaries of national literary histories. Both of these stories depict a communication error when humans are confronted with the unknown other. The texts have alternative figures describing the alien and similar tropes presenting the human. To explore the potentiality of figurative kinship between the two authors who are strangers to each other is not an ill-fated quest, but a search, which would eventually allow us to see some hidden patterns that literary studies usually miss.

No hay nación para este sexo: la Re(d)pública transatlántica de las Letras: escritoras españolas y latino-americanas (1824–1936) ed. by Pura Fernández

Reviewed by: No hay nación para este sexo: la Re(d)pública transatlántica de las Letras: escritoras españolas y latino-americanas (1824–1936) ed. by Pura Fernández Ronald Briggs TK Pura Fernández, editor. No hay nación para este sexo: la Re(d)pública transatlántica de las Letras: escritoras españolas y latino-americanas (1824–1936). Iberoamericana, 2015, 396 pp. Pura Fernández's new anthology focuses on the women who participated in what Habermas might call the public sphere in the Spanish-speaking world between the end of the Spanish American Wars of Independence and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Attuned in equal measure to the degree of agency afforded by the world of letters and the limits placed on that world by economic and political forces beyond its control, the group of 16 essayists assembled here provides an eloquent and well-researched series of investigations into the web of international and transatlantic literary networks that sustained women writers in Spain and Spanish America. Fernández's forcefully written and historically grounded introduction makes clear what is at stake in the project: not just the recovery of unjustly marginalized figures, but the advancement of a networkcentered approach to researching them that takes into account the influence of personal and official relationships on individual texts and careers. It is no accident that the time period covered by this collection roughly corresponds to the development of national literary histories and canons in the Spanish American republics. These histories have tended to serve as vehicles of oblivion and recovery—select clubs from which writers can be exiled and into which they can be rescued. Fernández's collection takes seriously the attempts of women in the Spanish-speaking world to create international networks that would serve as a counter-structure to the national ones that so often excluded them. This network-based approach is not without precedents, and Fernández's introduction acknowledges, among many other precursors, Francesca Denegri's work on Peruvian women intellectuals in the late nineteenth century and Leona S. Martin's 2004 article, "Nation Building, International Travel, and the Construction of the Nineteenth-Century Pan-Hispanic Women's Network." Going beyond the question of oblivion and recovery, Fernández also cites Lynn Hunt's articulation of New Cultural History as a guiding principle, underlining the need to focus on the structures that shape the production of texts. Aesthetics matters, too, in Fernández's analysis, and her introduction takes care to point out the intersections between the practical forces governing publication and distribution and the defining qualities of the literary: what artistic genius means and what sort of reaction a writer should seek to produce in her readers. She argues that the practical and the aesthetic did not exist in parallel isolation and that the notions of literary genius and objectivity developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries tended to put women writers at a disadvantage. [End Page 246] The breadth of the collection—16 essays and a substantial introduction covering three continents and two hemispheres—makes it difficult to summarize. Since it would be impossible to discuss every essay in detail, I will offer some reflections on a sampling that reflect the overall high quality of scholarship on display throughout. The collection's geographical and temporal breadth extends to genres of cultural production, too, as the works under consideration range from William Acree's appraisal of the hand-woven divisas carried by nineteenth-century soldiers in Río de la Plata to the role of women writers in the 1910 celebration of the centennial of the Revolución de Mayo analyzed by Javier Lluch-Prats. Networking and its practical and aesthetic implications take center stage in essays by Noël Valis, Akiko Tsuchiya, and María Nelly Goswitz that deal, respectively, with mentorship among romantic writers in Spain and the US, the influence of gender and anti-slavery organizations in the writings of Faustino Sáez de Melgar, and the legacy of real and virtual literary salons. These studies use archival and published materials to reconstruct the literary communities in question and the concrete role they played...

Translation's Forgotten History: Russian Literature, Japanese Mediation, and the Formation of Modern Korean Literature by Heekyoung Cho

Reviewed by: Translation's Forgotten History: Russian Literature, Japanese Mediation, and the Formation of Modern Korean Literature by Heekyoung Cho Kelly Y. Jeong Translation's Forgotten History: Russian Literature, Japanese Mediation, and the Formation of Modern Korean Literature by Heekyoung Cho. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Pp. xiv + 242. $39.95 cloth. Heekyoung Cho's Translation's Forgotten History presents a study of "the role of translation in the formation of a modern literature by examining how colonial Koreans appropriated Russian literature, through the medium of Japanese relay translations, while in the process of building their own modern literature in the early twentieth century" (p. x). It also "provides a broader East Asian perspective from which to understand the formation of modern literatures" (p. xi). The author's research suggests that "Russian literature became one element in a form of anti-imperial cosmopolitanism in East Asia" during this period (p. xii). Cho thus presents the underexplored history of localization and indigenization in the formation of modern Korean literature, in which foreign literature, ideas, and images play a pivotal role. This book is a much-needed work that fills a gap in knowledge in the study of the relationship among Russian, Japanese, and Korean modern literatures. Due to Cold War politics as well as the linguistic challenge of being familiar with all three languages, this book is the first of its kind (p. 27). Cho's book is informed by meticulous research. Its author's insights include the fact that literature is a "dynamic process of negotiating various foreign and local values" (p. 27) and that Korea's encounter with foreign texts during the formative years of its modern literature is a site where modernity, colonialism, and nationalism intersect (p. 95). Cho also effectively cites works of several Korean literary historians and theorists, connecting her own scholarship with theirs. Since Cho views literature as a process rather than a monument, it is not surprising that she critiques the pervasive amnesia about the impure origins of national literature and the negotiated and hybrid nature of national languages, as well as the erasure of translated foreign literature from mainstream national literary history. This criticism reminds the reader of several other Korean-studies monographs that focus on similar contexts to explain how postcolonial, postwar South [End Page 292] Korea's national literature is partly established through a denial and erasure of leftist and North Korean literature.1 These books also discuss ways in which translation becomes an essential element in constructing a hegemonic national literature and its history in the modern era. In her analysis, Cho borrows Naoki Sakai's concept of "the regime of translation" to explain the relationship between Japanese and Russian literatures and the formation of modern Korean literature, arguing that "national literature has inherently been comparative literature" (p. 6). Also at stake in Cho's book is the cultural politics of a subjugated Korean culture in the colonial era. Following Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Cho claims that a "translator's 'choices' and ensuing 'differences'—and distortions—made in the translated text were ethical in a subjugated culture because indigenization itself was one way of demonstrating agency under cultural and political dominance" (p. 22). As an example, Cho notes the irony of typical "relay translations" in colonial Korea—these works are translations into Korean from Japanese, but their originals are actually Russian—and points out that this kind of translation leads to the construction of the Korean language as an "equivalent linguistic entity vis-à-vis the colonizer's language" (p. 23). Thus, colonial Korean intellectuals' process of making their own modern literature was "doubly complex" (p. 25) in a fashion typical of a colony; they took Western literature as their model but viewed Japanese literature as a kind of sieve that, ultimately, they wanted to discard. Therefore, as Cho points out, this "social context legitimizes liberal and unfaithful translation as a disruptive, if not subversive, practice, and complicates the judgment about the ethics of literal translation in colonial Korea" (p. 25). With this context in mind, she uses the term "translation" to refer to two things. First, "it denotes a broad spectrum of substantial practices and texts. It includes types...

Blonda själar: Johan Runius, maskulinitet, nation och genre i litteraturhistorien

‘Blond Souls’: Johan Runius, Masculinity, Nation and Genre in Literary HistoryThis paper shows that the historiographical accounts of Johan Runius (1679–1713) remain remarkably stable, from the early stages of national literary history of the nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, despite the radical theoretical shifts taking place during the period. The poet Runius is generally described as an occasional poet, a rhyme virtuoso, a good-tempered man, and as a precursor of the celebrated Carl Michael Bellman, considered a uniquely Swedish genius. These features are connected to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ideals of masculinity and the nation. Whereas Runius in the early nineteenth century was described as childish, during the later nineteenth century his good temper was interpreted as an ideal, steadfast masculinity in the face of the hardships of early eighteenth-century Sweden. Further, the historiographical tradition set greater store by poems defined as lyrical. The hailed poems were, in fact, occasional poems, but they were recontextualised by the literary historians as proof of Runius’ personal feelings. The article ends with new suggestions for reading Runius beyond nation as the ordering principle of literary history.

Bidūn Poets and Kuwaiti Literary History

This article examines the ways in which Bidūn (stateless) poets negotiate and contest their placement within dominant narratives of national literary history in Kuwait. The article offers an analytical overview of the dominant modalities in which national literary history in Kuwait has been conceived as it relates to questions of national beginnings, periodization and the placement of stateless poets. Read against the existing modalities, the article analyzes the Bidūn poet Saʿdiyya Mufarriḥ’s The Cameleers of Clouds and Estrangement (2007) as a revisionist account of national literary history that opposes the exclusion of Bidūn writers. This is achieved by an emphasis on the inclusivity of literary and cultural affiliation over the exclusivity of limiting notions of official national belonging. A critical analysis of the arena of national literary history writing in Kuwait aims to offer a novel perspective on how notions of national belonging are being renegotiated from the margins.

Beckett's Bodies in the Trilogy, or Life as a Pensum

Beckett's literary bilingualism challenges in unique ways notions of national literature, literary traditions and histories. The cosmopolitan literary movements with which the Irish author has been associated, on the one hand, and his systematic literary bilingualism, on the other, make it difficult to assign him definite precursors and place his work in a well-defined national literary history. Similarly, the biographies of Beckett's characters become arduous to establish as his œuvre unfolds. When the author switches to French and first-person narrators in 1946, his anti-narrative strategies and corollary enterprise of desubjectification disinherit his characters and ‘nip’ their life stories ‘in the bud.’ Beckett's ensuing practice of self-translation complicates matters further as his works come under the sway of a double genealogy. This essay reconsiders the questions of filiations, affiliations and genealogies in Beckett's works by focusing on the pivotal role of the body in the trilogy. It identifies the trajectory of the body in the novels and traces the gradual loss of its physical integrity as it is borne across languages. Drawing on three terms that resonate throughout the novels and appear in a key passage in Beckett's monograph on Proust: ‘body’, ‘pensum’ and ‘defunctus,’ it analyzes their interconnections in the novels to foreground a decomposing body that becomes liable for the narrators' linguistic failure. The essay ultimately suggests that the bilingual œuvre taken as a whole intimates the end of genealogies and substitutes for the principle of generation that of an organic corporeal life lived as a pensum.

O Brešićevoj, Bagićevoji Rafoltovoj književno-povijesnoj upisanosti (u filološki "dis/kontinuitet").

This article discusses three recent books that deal with the Croatian literary hi/story. In the first part of the work we discuss the issues of the contemporary post-structural and deconstructionist view of writing history. The argument is based on Alun Munslow’s thesis that it is not possible to write hi/story outside the narrative genre. The starting point of discussion is that hi/story (of literature) is only one of possible modal practices of narration/narrative. This means that history can only be read as one of many narratives while simultaneously it reflects the narrative that is produced by its nature/mode. That in many ways changes the way in which today, in poststructuralist and postmodern perspective, one can (and will) interpret the tradition of literary history as a “practical activity” (interpretation of meaning and/or philological discipline) but also as a story (construction). The tradition of Croatian literary history is very much dependent on the narrative(s) of the nation, the idea of its continuity in time (“diachronic development”) and on viewing literature as the narration of the nation, or as a major way of preserving national memory. In most books on the 19th and the 20th century national literary history this was the prevailing viewpoint of scholars who were constructing the Croatian cannon and national narrative as “agreed upon” hi/story “of the nation” (and its literary memory/canon). The three books discussed in this article, each in its particular way (methodologically and by its idea of how to interpret texts), change, or at least contribute to the change of this traditionalist storytelling that has become hi/story (of national literature). This article simultaneously challenges the tradition of (literary) history writing and interprets various aspects of reading hi/story anew in the works by three contemporary authors. It puts in perspective three different types of “politics of small differences” that form the basis of the original contributions. Brešić’s study into the Croatian 19th century literature shifted from writing the hi/story of writers and national narratives towards the modes of presentation and study of genres. Bagić’s study of contemporary literature for the first time treats traditional literary genres and new media, as well as popular culture, equally, thus allowing new insight into the possibilities of studying both fiction and its discursive frames. The third book discussed here introduces the discussion of the role that contemporary questioning of humanities as a discipline has in both post-structural environment and interpretative community of scholars. In conclusion, the article discusses the possibilities of reading (literary) history anew in the hegemonic environment of school system, academia and cultural paradigm of the “nation”.

From the Margin to the Center: The Transformation of the Identity Discourse of Chinese Ethnic Minority Literature

Generally, the paper tries to rethink and rediscover the very notion and the identity discourse of Chinese ethnic literatures through multi-ethnic perspectives. According to the survey, the author finds ethnic minorities and their cultures are either under “ethnic erasure” or excluded from many of the orthodox Chinese national literary histories, while writers and artists of Han nationality have always taken the center stage. The misconception of Chinese literature as Han national literature is influenced by the orthodox Chinese national literary histories and hegemonic discourses. With the transformation of literary history from monistic to multivalent, Chinese ethnic minority literatures are moving from the margin to the center in the literary landscape of China, reclaiming their identities and providing another practical methods for Chinese literature to enter into a dialogue with the world from a new perspective.

Maamesilasena maailmas ehk lihtsalt Jüri Talveti meetodist / On Jüri Talvet’s Comparative Method

Teesid: Artikkel defineerib maailmakirjanduse professor Jüri Talveti komparativistlikku meetodit nii maamesilase metafoori kui ka tema poolt tutvustatud mõistete edaphos (’pind’) ja episteme (’teadmine’) kaudu. Võrdleva kirjandusteadlase ülesanne on kahesuunaline: tutvustada eesti kirjandust maailmas ja vahendada mujal loodut meie kultuurile. Kuigi õpetlaste teoreetiline metasüsteem ja mõistevõrk – episteme – võib areneda väga keeruliseks, peab see alati juurduma edaphos’es kui toitvas pinnases, mille loovad sõnakunstiteosed ja rahvuslikud kirjanduslood. Avardades võrdlevat edaphos’t, aktiveerime ja rikastame ka maailma episteme’t. The article aims at defining the comparative method of Jüri Talvet, professor of comparative literature. This can be carried out by an application of Talvet’s own metaphor for himself – a bumble bee, or via two concepts elaborated by him – edaphos (base) and episteme (knowledge). The bumble bee, by nature more reclusive and peaceful but somehow more attractive looks than a regular bee flies out from its modest sod nest across blooming meadows, disseminating homely pollen among the leaves of grass of the wide world. Then it faithfully returns with nourishing nectar that feeds its family. As chairman of the Estonian Comparative Literature Association, and founder and editor-in-chief of the comparative literature journal Interlitteraria, Talvet has written: “Its purpose is to channel new literary-philosophical ideas from the international area to Estonia and, at the same time, to spread knowledge about Estonian literary and philosophical studies outside Estonia, as well as to let the wider world have some idea of Estonian literature itself which, because of the language barrier, has belonged traditionally to the majority of “silent” literatures of the world, unjustly ignored by the area of the dominant Western languages.” Yet, no matter how complex our theoretical meta-systems and conceptual framework – episteme – might develop, it always needs to be firmly based on edaphos as its foundation, that is, on works of literature and national literary histories. By extending the comparative edaphos, we also enrich the world’s episteme. It is therefore not surprising that, as a scholar with extensive knowledge of world literature, Talvet has great affinity for tellurism, an aesthetic concept used in Hispanic cultures that is largely unknown to the English-speaking world.