Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the Excellence Award for Collaborative Research granted by the European Society of Comparative Literature (ESCL) In Great Immortality, twenty scholars from considerably different cultural backgrounds explore the ways in which certain poets, writers, and artists in Europe have become major figures of cultural memory.
Trade Review"The culture-specific particularities and the local twists to the editors’ foundational model keep the individual case studies intriguing. [...]. Great Immortality contributes in meaningful and significant ways to the new surge of nationalism studies. [...] "Brill’s book series National Cultivation of Culture, in which Helgason and Dović’s excellent volume appears, keeps on producing such fine scholarship to investigate these complex matters further". Sándor Hites, in Literary Research, Fall 2020. "A stimulating and rich collection of essays, Great Immortality introduces and explores the metaphor of “cultural saint” in its bid to understand the complex relationship between authors’ and creative artists’ lives, their reception by their contemporaries and their posterity, and the relationship of these factors to 19th-century romantic nationalism. [...] The volume’s engagement with the nature of cultus presents not only important insights into European cultural history but also into 19th- and early 20th-century memory politics and canon formations." Zsuzsanna Varga, in CompLit Journal of European Literature, Arts and Society, 2022.
Table of Contents Preface Marko Juvan and Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson Acknowledgements List of Figures Notes on Contributors Introduction Marijan Dović and Jón Karl Helgason Part 1: 1 Sacral States: The Politics of Worship, Religious and Secular Joep Leerssen 2 Framing the Bones of Dante and Petrarch: Literary Cults and Scientific Discourses Harald Hendrix Part 2: 3 Taming a Romantic: The Canonization of Adam Mickiewicz Roman Koropeckyj 4 The Riddles of the Shevchenko Cult Christian Noack 5 Hagiographic Discourse in the Early Biographies of France Prešeren Alenka Koron 6 Stanko Vraz and the Missing Saints of the Illyrian Movement Andraž Jež Part 3: 7 Bialik the Prophet and the Modern Hebrew Canon David Fishelov 8 Jacint Verdaguer, a Catalan Cultural Saint Magí Sunyer and Jaume Subirana 9 “Altars of the Flemish Movement”: Tombstones and Rituals of Nation-Building Andreas Stynen Part 4: 10 Hero or Traitor? The Cultural Canonization of Snorri Sturluson in Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Beyond Simon Halink 11 Ilia Chavchavadze: Georgia’s Cultural Saint and a Saint of the Georgian Orthodox Church Bela Tsipuria 12 The Third Canonization of Njegoš, the National Poet of Montenegro Bojan Baskar Part 5: 13 Prophet, Martyr, Saint: Mihai Eminescu’s Lateral Canonization Andrei Terian 14 Antoni Gaudí and Jože Plečnik: Two Architects on the Path from Cultural Canonization to Catholic Beatification Luka Vidmar 15 From the Culture of Saints to the Saints of Culture: The Saint and the Writer between Life and Work Jernej Habjan Copyright of Figures Index of Names
