Description
Book Synopsis Literary museums today must respond to new challenges; the traditional image of the author’s home museum as a sacred place of literary pilgrimage centered around a national hero has been questioned, and literary museums have begun to develop new strategies centered not only on biography, but also literary texts, imagined spaces, different readers, historical contexts, architectural concepts, and artistic interventions. As this volume shows, the changing of spaces asks how literary museums create new ways of interlinking real and literary spaces, texts, objects, readers, and tourists.
Trade Review “This is a fine and rich collection of essays on the topic of the literary museum, notably on the writer's house museum. It offers engaging perspectives and new horizons that in the international scholarship on this topic will be highly appreciated.” • Harald Hendrix, University of Utrecht
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Expanded Spaces and Changing Contexts of Author Museums
Ulrike Spring, Johan Schimanski and Thea Aarbakke
Part I: Expansion
Chapter 1. New Architecture in Author Museums and Centres
Elin Haugdal
Chapter 2. A Displaced Apartment of a Poet in a Museum: Staging and Reception of Franz Grillparzer in the Wien Museum
Eva-Maria Orosz
Chapter 3. From Cobwebs to a Web-Based Reality: Drawing Young Adults into a Memorial House
Anna Benedek
Chapter 4. Ghostly Voices in the Author Museum
Ulrike Spring and Johan Schimanski
Chapter 5. Unpacking the Book Collection: Following a Guide, a Curator and a Librarian in an Author Museum
Thea Aarbakke
Chapter 6. The Gunnar Ekelöf Room and the Poet’s Widow as Archivist and Author
Helena Bodin
Chapter 7. This Is Not a Set of Guidelines – or How (Not) to Exhibit Literature
Vanessa Zeissig
Part II: Politics
Chapter 8. New Sites of Worship: Sovietization and Literary Museums in Western Borderlands, 1940–79
Anastasia Felcher
Chapter 9. Exposing the Obscurity of the Chinese Literary Establishment: The Destabilizing Power of Author Museums
Emily Graf
Chapter 10. South African Literature, Author Museums and Narrative Expansion: The Olive Schreiner House
Dana Ryan Lande
Chapter 11. Troublesome Heritage in the Home of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Marianne Egeland
Chapter 12. Housing World Literature: The Norwegian Ibsen Museums
Narve Fulsås
Epilogue: Author Museums and Democratization
Ulrike Spring, Johan Schimanski and Thea Aarbakke
Index
