Comparative literature Books

Book SynopsisThe Other and Otherness in European Literatures

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Book SynopsisCase Studies of European Literatures: the Phenomenon of Transgression

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Book SynopsisJakob Arjounis Texte erzählen von Verlierern und Betrügern, die verzweifelt bis perfide versuchen, ihre Umwelt oder auch sich selbst zu täuschen. Sie erzählen auch von der deutschen Identität und der ihr inhärenten Ablehnung und Abgrenzung vom Fremden. Stereotypisierung und Subversion sind bei Arjouni zentrale Erzählverfahren, die den oberflächlichen Blick auf das Andere und das Eigene spiegeln, aber auch auf narrative und gattungsspezifische Stereotype zurückgreifen. Hinter Arjounis Ironie, Situationskomik und Sprachwitz scheint eine Ästhetik des Scheiterns an individuellen und gesellschaftlichen Voraussetzungen im Deutschland der Nachkriegszeit durch. Zehn Jahre nach Arjounis Tod präsentiert dieser Band Forschungsergebnisse und -tendenzen zu seinem Werk.Arjouni's texts tell the stories of losers and impostors who desperately try to uphold their identity concepts or satisfy social demands. They also adress the German' identity and its inherent rejection and demarcation from the foreign'. Stereotyping and subversion are central narrative devices in Arjouni?'s work, mirroring the superficial view of the other' and the own', but also encompassing narrative and genre-specific stereotypes. Behind Arjouni's irony, situational comedy, and wit, an aesthetic of failure to satisfy individual and social conditions in postwar Germany shines through. Ten years after Arjouni's death, this book presents research findings and tendencies on his work.

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Book SynopsisHungarian urban culture in the 20th and the 21st centuries.When consulting key works on urban studies, the absence of Central and Eastern European towns is striking. Cities such as Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and Trieste, where such notable figures as Freud, Ferenczi, Kafka, and Joyce lived and worked, are rarely studied in a translocal framework, as if Central and Eastern Europe were still a blind spot of European modernity. This volume expands the scope of literary urban studies by focusing on Budapest and Hungarian small towns, offering in-depth analyses of the intriguing link between literature, the arts, and material culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. The case studies situate Hungarian urban culture within the global flow of ideas as they explore the period of modernism, the mid-century, and the post-1989 era in a context that moves well beyond the borders of the country.Contributors: Árpád Bak (University of Leeds), Éva Federmayer (Eötvös Loránd University), Magdolna Gucsa (Eötvös Loránd University / ÉHESS), Ágnes Györke (Károli Gáspár University), Ferenc Hörcher (Eötvös József Research Centre), Tamás Juhász (Károli Gáspár University), György Kalmár (University of Debrecen), László Munteán (Radboud University), Ágnes Klára Papp (Károli Gáspár University), Márta Pellérdi (Pázmány Péter Catholic University), Eszter Ureczky (University of Debrecen).This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).This book will be made open access within three years of publication thanks to Path to Open, a program developed in partnership between JSTOR, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), University of Michigan Press, and The University of North Carolina Press to bring about equitable access and impact for the entire scholarly community, including authors, researchers, libraries, and university presses around the world. Learn more at https://about.jstor.org/path-to-open/Trade ReviewTaken together, the chapters in this book provide a coherent overview of representations of the Hungarian city in literature, theater, and cinema. This book will act as an important future reference work for scholars working on the 20th and 21st century Hungarian city. And it reminds scholars unfamiliar with Hungarian urban culture of the vast range of urban phenomena that remain underrepresented in academic literature in English.Lieven Ameel, Tampere University

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Book SynopsisStanley Corngold is Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at Princeton University, USA, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of 10 books, including, The Mind in Exile (Princeton University Press, 2022). He has edited 11 books, including the Norton Critical Edition of Kafka's Selected Stories (ed. and trans., with preface, notes and critical apparatus) and the Modern Library edition of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (ed. and trans., with introduction, notes, and critical materials).

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Book SynopsisUlf Schulenberg is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany, and author of Zwischen Realismus und Avantgarde: Drei Paradigmen für die Aporien des Entweder-Oder (2000), Lovers and Knowers: Moments of the American Cultural Left (2007), Romanticism and Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Idea of a Poeticized Culture (2015), Marxism, Pragmatism, and Postmetaphysics: From Finding to Making (2019), and Pragmatism and Poetic Agency: The Persistence of Humanism (2021).

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Book SynopsisThis book is inspired by the author’s work as part of a major international and interdisciplinary research group at the University of Konstanz, Germany: “What If—On the Meaning, Relevance, and Epistemology of Counterfactual Claims and Thought Experiments.” Having contributed to great discoveries, such as those by Galileo and Einstein, thought experiments are especially topical in the twenty-first century, since this is a concept that bridges the gap between the arts and the sciences, promoting interdisciplinary innovation. To study thought experiments in literature, it is imperative to examine relevant texts closely: this has rarely been done to date and this is precisely what this book does as a pilot study focusing on selected works of philosophy and literature. Specifically, thought experiments by Thomas Malthus are analyzed side by side with short stories and novels by Vladimir Odoevsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Alexander Bogdanov and Aleksei Tolstoy, Alexander Chaianov and Nina Berberova.Trade Review“While Grigorian carefully follows the narrative of each text, she discovers the connections between them, thanks to her consistent viewpoint. As she maintains, she successfully brings chronologically isolated utopian or dystopian dreams into a dialogue with each other, with Malthus and so on. … Finally, let me remark on the practical significance of this book. Grigorian argues that thought experiments investigated here will provide helpful insight into social and environmental problems in the post-2020 world. This global crisis has become much more serious after February 24, 2022. The cosmic scenarios concerning Malthusian theory provided by Russian writers will enable us to think about the world today from new perspectives.”— Yuki Fukui, Studies in East European Thought“Engagingly and clearly written, Visions of the Future represents an original approach to Russian utopian fiction and utopian fiction in general. This originality emerges primarily in the book's orientation to the strictly formal influence of counterfactual or hypothetical reasoning on the narrative strategies employed in utopian fiction, while its persuasive force lies in its careful account of well-chosen examples of this influence.”— Jeff Love, Research Professor of German and Russian, Clemson UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Thomas Malthus, the Problem of Population, and Counterfactual Thought Experiments: A Concise Overview Thought Experiments in Vladimir Odoevsky’s Russian Nights (1844) Thomas Malthus and Nikolai Chernyshevsky: Struggle for Existence or Mutual Help? Utopian Dreams in What Is to Be Done? (1863) Revolution on Earth and Mars: Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star (1908) and Aleksei Tolstoy’s Aelita (1923) A Peasant Utopia: Alexander Chaianov’s My Brother Aleksei’s Journey (1920) Overpopulation in Nina Berberova’s Short Story “In Memory of Schliemann” (1958), in the Context of Malthusian Theory ConclusionBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThis collection of essays covers a hundred-year history of Russian-language literature in Israel, including the pre-state period. Some of the studies are devoted to an overview of the literary process and the activities of its participants, others—to individual genres and movements. As a result, a complex and multifaceted picture emerges of a not quite fully defined, but very lively and dynamic community that develops in the most difficult conditions. The contributors trace the paths of Russian-Israeli prose, poetry and drama, various waves of avant-garde, fantasy, and critical thought. Today, in Russian-Israeli literature, the voices of writers of various generations and waves of repatriation are intertwined: from the "seventies" to the "war aliyah" of the recent times. Both the Russian-Israeli authors and their critics often hold different opinions of their respective roles in Israel’s historical and literary storms. While disagreeing on the definition of their place on the map of modern culture, Russian-Israeli writers are united by a shared bond with the fate of the Jewish state.Trade Review“While this book features many different authors and diverse objects of investigation, it also creates a panoramic view of Russian-Israeli literature—both in style and in chronology. The book should be of great interest to scholars and general readers alike. The very notion of ‘Russian-Israeli literature’ (similarly to the notion of ‘Russian-American literature’) will doubtless illicit questions. Some readers might even ask: And where does the writer belong if she or he has two addresses, sometimes even simultaneously, in two different countries? In what category should we place translations into the Russian language? What is the principal difference between Russian-Israeli literature and, say, Yiddish-Israeli or Polish-Israeli literatures? In other words, this book not only offers a great deal of new materials but also invites us to think of the directions of further research.”—Gennady Estraikh, Professor, New York University, author of Transatlantic Russian Jewishness“Studies in the History of Russian-Israeli Literature is a unique and peerless project. Despite the fragmentary nature of the genre stated in the title, this collection captures many aspects of the previously unexplored, multibranched phenomenon of Russian-Israeli literature. The chronological span renders this collection particularly ponderous as it allows the reader to conceptualize Russian-Israeli literature as one of the most original, historically varied ‘hyphenated’ literatures with its own fairly rather rich traditions. The book brings together some of today’s leading researchers from a number of countries, thus reflecting a diversity of viewpoints, epistemological contexts and theoretical approaches; such diversity has never before been seen in any works on this subject. And this motley gathering of authors constitutes not a shortcoming but rather one of the collection’s great merits for it betokens the very complex nature Russian-Israeli literature, having come about at the intersection of various geographical and cultural identities and styles, which evolved and changed over the course of the waves of aliyah, political regimes, and many other circumstances. I urge you to read this book. It will be of great interest to all those interested not only in Israeli and Russian, but also the multilingual and multifaceted Jewish culture of different epoch.”—Klavdia Smola, Professor, University of Dresden, author of Inventing the Tradition: Contemporary Russian-Jewish Literature“Russian-Israeli literature is, perhaps, the most fascinating of all the literatures to have been created and still being created in the Russian language outside the boundaries of the Russian Empire, the USSR and the post-Soviet spaces. While the title of this book contains the modest term ‘studies,’ the book in fact carries out a tremendously complex task: to conceptualize the corpus of Russian-Israeli literature by concentrating the work along two principal axes, historical-cultural and generic. Additionally challenges faced by the book’s editors and contributors had to do with the fact that a significant part of Russian-Israeli literature resists cross-cultural translation into any of the dominant languages of contemporary culture. Much of what has been created by Russian-Israeli writers could be translated as ‘thoughtcrime.’ The project of delineating the historical contours of Russian-Israeli literature and to understand its provenance and development lies at the very heart of this remarkable book.”—Dennis Sobolev, Professor, University of Haifa, author of The Split World of Gerard Manley Hopkins Table of ContentsFrom the EditorsRussian-Language Literature in Eretz Israel (Basic Outlines and Authors)Vladimir KhazanJulius Margolin and His TimesLuba JurgensonIsraeli-Soviet Literary Ties in the 1950s–1980s: from Translations to Aliyah LibraryMarat GrinbergLeaving Russia: Russian-Israeli Literature of the 1970s–1980sAleksei SurinPaths of Russian Avant-Garde Poetry in IsraelMaxim D. ShrayerProse of the Aliyah of the 1990s–2000sRoman KatsmanRussian-Israeli Prose in the Second Decade of the Twenty-First CenturyElena PromyshlianskaiaGenres of Israeli-Russian Fantastic FictionElena RimonThe Phenomenon of Russian-Israeli Dramaturgy of the 1970s–2020sZlata ZaretskyFrom the History of Russian Israeli Literary Criticism (On One Method of Delineating Literary Contacts between Russia and Israel) Leonid KatsisAbout the ContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisThe title of this monograph, ‘Polish Jewish Re-Remembering’, refers to the post-1989, thirty-year-long process of reviving attention to Polish-Jewish relations in historical, cultural, and literary studies, including the impact of Jews on the development of Polish culture, their presence in Polish social life, and the relationships between Jews and non-Jews in Poland. The book consists of four parts: the first focuses on Polish, Jewish and Polish-Jewish Literature (dealing mainly with pre-1939 literary works); the second, on the post-war literary output of the Polish-Jewish writer Arnold Słucki (1920–1972); the third, on Polish-Israeli literary images in the works of writers who were active in Israel (1948–2018); and the fourth, on recent (after 2000) Polish Holocaust literature.Trade Review“In this sweeping and heart-wrenching book, Slawomir Żurek takes us on a fascinating voyage from the prewar Polish-Jewish poets to Polish writers in Israel who are struggling to contend—in the shadow of the Shoah and in their mother tongue—with the shattering of their once-flourishing world. Packed with deftly sketched portraits, the result is an impassioned and poignant history of a bifurcated Polish-Jewish culture.”— Vivian Liska, author of German-Jewish Thought and its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy“This wide-ranging and path-breaking collection of essays is a comprehensive account of the way the impact of Polish Jews on the development of Polish culture, their presence in Polish social life, and relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles has been reflected in literature and literary criticism. These complex and controversial topics are handled in a manner that is both sensitive and dispassionate, and the book seeks to find a path to a common Polish Jewish remembering. It is essential reading for all those interested in the complex interaction of Poles and Jews.”— Antony Polonsky, Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University, Chief Historian, Global Education Outreach Project, Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw“The relation between the Polish and Jewish literary fields constitutes a major area of Sławomir Jacek Żurek’s scholarly research. His dedication to ‘The Polish-Jewish Borderland’ has lasted decades, and his contributions to the field of Christian-Jewish relations and the origin of antisemitism contains important studies on historical, sociological, literary, and spiritual topics.In Polish-Jewish Re-Remembering, Żurek aspires to a commendable goal of reevaluating a topic that’s in ‘the processes of transformation, transmutation, and transfiguration,’ to identify the crucial sources of his conclusions. The reader observes people of different identities, including different identities among Jews themselves.This well informed and fascinating narration provides a roadmap to dealing with one of the most difficult areas in history and literature as well as the reality we still experience around us.” — Anna Frajlich, Senior Lecturer Emerita, Columbia University, and Polish writer. “Zurek's book is an extensive study of Polish-Jewish relations. The area where everything is played out here is memory, and the title category of re-remembering means extracting content from the deep layers of forgetting and repression. The author's interpretive work can be called burying in memory, which has a double sense: it is about digging through memory and burying in it what has been dug up, about extracting from oblivion and entrusting the social memory with the extracted content. Even more explicitly: it's about revival and burial at the same time.In this archaeological-philological work, the author seeks above all that which is connective, bilateral, and therefore neither exclusively Jewish nor exclusively Polish, but Jewish-Polish or even JewishPolish. He discusses literary depictions of Polish-Jewish cities (Lublin) and regions (the Borderlands), presents a common warfare (Polish Jews in the army of the Second Polish Republic), analyzes the linguistic consciousness of Polish-Jewish poets, extensively presents the work of the important poet Arnold Slutsky, and interprets the writings of Polish Jews creating in Israel.All these studies bring us closer to the last part of the book, in which the author presents Polish literature written after 2000 as a rogue method of assimilating and processing Jewish culture. Younger writers introduce traces of the presence of Jewish culture into Polish literature but use the Holocaust as a kind of bible of the third millennium—as the broadest common language, as a system of cultural references, as a set of topoi. In addition, they introduce the Holocaust using pop culture, collective psychoanalysis, or pornography. They consider no literary tricks forbidden, no register of language inaccessible. And they shatter the system of correctness. Not because they want to use the Holocaust for scandal, but because they want to understand the Polish present—full of social aggression, transferred hatred, crafted memories and real content of displacement. Zurek thus leads us to the conclusion that one cannot understand oneself in today's Polish society without understanding Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust. Actually, a reader could start reading the whole book from this last part. And then retreat into the depths of memory. Re-memorizing corpses of texts and corpses of bodies.” — Professor Przemysław Czapliński, Director of Center for Open Humanities, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland Table of ContentsIntroduction: Why “Re-Remembering?” BETWEEN ARIA AND GOLUS: POLISH, JEWISH, AND POLISH JEWISH LITERATURE1. Magen Lublin (לובלין מגן): Arnsztajnowa and Czechowicz2. Shadows of Jewish Lublin in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Polish Poetry3. Polish Jews in the Army of the Second Republic: Adolf Rudnicki’s Profile i drobiazgi żołnierskie 4. Christian-Jewish Relationships: Shalom Acsh’s “The Witch from Castile”5. The Languages of Polish Jews: Linguistic Dilemmas of Polish Jewish Poets 6. The Mythical Phenomenon of the Borderlands in Polish Jewish Poetry7. Polish Jewish Poetry and the ChildFOUR SIDES OF TIME: THE LITERARY TRAVELS OF ARNOLD SŁUCKI8. Polish Jewish Warsaw: Lyrical Notes9. Two Faces of Russia: Biography and Poetry10. “Idols” and “Idol”: Interpretations 11. A Polish Publicist in IsraelTWO LANDS AND TWO SKIES: POLISH ISRAELI LITERARY IMAGES12. Poland and Poles in the Poetry of Authors Writing in Polish in Israel13. The Double Messiah: Leo Lipski’s Piotruś 14. Poetry and Judaism: Anna Frajlich’s “Wiersze izraelskie”15. Literary Criticism in the Israeli Daily Newspaper Nowiny-Kurier after 1968: A ReconnaissanceTHE TEXTUAL WORLD OF THE HOLOCAUST: THE SHOAH IN RECENT POLISH LITERATURE16. The Shoah and Topoi17. Reconstructions 18. Transfigurations 19. SubversionsConclusion: Comparative Study of MemoryBibliographyIndex of Persons

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Book SynopsisIn the six essays of this book, Ksana Blank examines affinities among works of nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian literature and their connections to the visual arts and music. Blank demonstrates that the borders of authorial creativity are not stable and absolute, that talented artists often transcend the classifications and paradigms established by critics. Featured in the volume are works by Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, Daniil Kharms, Kazimir Malevich, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

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Book SynopsisOn the Horizon of World Literature compares literary texts from asynchronous periods of incipient literary modernity in different parts of the world: Romantic England and Republican China. These moments were oriented alike by “world literature” as a discursive framework of classifications that connected and re-organized local articulations of literary histories and literary modernities. World literature thus provided—and continues to provide—a condition of possibility for conversation between cultures as well as for their mutual provincialization.

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