The Soviet Project of the 1930s to Found a “World Literature” and British Literary Internationalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-425
Author(s):  
Katerina Clark

Abstract A major lacuna in Pascale Casanova’s account of world literature in her World Republic of Letters is the Soviet venture into establishing a “world literature” (mirovaia literatura) to be centered not in Paris but in Moscow. This aim was most actively pursued between the wars, when many writers were implicated in its international network. This moment in literary history provides a missing link in the progression from the more elitist world literature as conceived by Goethe and others in the early nineteenth century to world literature in our postcolonialist present and era of globalization. This article outlines the networks that sought to foster such a world literature and the main aesthetic controversies within the movement. In particular, the article looks at the efforts of such official spokesmen as Andrei Zhdanov, Karl Radek, and Georg Lukács to proscribe “bourgeois” modernism. It takes members of the British Writers’ International and their associated journals the Left Review and New Writing as case studies in the interplay between Moscow as putative “metropole” and the “periphery.”

1995 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Cooper ◽  
Moira Donald

Cet article étudie la parenté entre les chefs de ménage et leurs serviteurs domestiques, dans la banlieue d'Exeter. On se concentre particulièrement sur les cas où le recensement ancien n'enregistre pas de lien familial et où le nom de famille du chef de menage est different de celui de son employé, homme ou femme. On a cependant réussi à prouver une parenté de sang entre maître et domestique. La méthode adoptée pour ce travail est inhabituelle, d'autant plus qu'on a tracé aussi bien les lignées féminines que masculines, ce qui a mené à des conclusions intéressantes et nouvelles en ce qui concerne d'une part les proportions de membres de la famille qui résident dans les ménages au début du XIXe siècle et d'autre part la nature du service domestique durant cette période.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-116
Author(s):  
Floris Solleveld

Abstract What happened to the Republic of Letters? Its history seems to stop at the end of the eighteenth century. And yet, in the nineteenth century, there still existed a community gathered in scholarly societies, maintaining a transnational correspondence network and filling learned journals. The term indeed becomes less frequent, but does not go entirely out of use. This article traces the afterlives of the Republic of Letters in the early nineteenth century. Specifically, it investigates texts that attempt to (re)define the Republic of Letters or a cognate, the wider diffusion of the term, and the changing role of learned journals in that period. While most attempts to reinvent the Republic of Letters failed miserably, they indicate a diagnosis of the state of learning and the position of scholars in a period of transition, and in doing so they contradict an ‘unpolitical’ conception of the Republic of Letters.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-171
Author(s):  
Katherine Bowers

Ann Radcliffe’s novels were extremely popular in early nineteenth-century Russia. Publication of her work in Russian translation propelled the so-called gothic wave of 1800-10. Yet, many of the works Radcliffe was known for in Russia were not written by her; rather, they were works by others that were attributed to Radcliffe. This article traces the publication and translation histories of Radcliffiana on the Russian book market of 1800-20. Building on JoEllen DeLucia’s concept of a “corporate Radcliffe” in the anglophone world, this article proposes a Russian corporate Radcliffe. Identifying, classifying, and analysing the provenance of Russian corporate Radcliffe works reveals insight into the transnational circulation of texts and the role of copyright law within it, the nature of the early nineteenth-century Russian book market, the rise of popular reading and advertising in Russia, and the gendered nature of critical discourse at this time. The Russian corporate Radcliffe assures the legacy and influence of Radcliffe in later Russian literature and culture, although a Radcliffe that represents much more than just the English author. Exploring the Russian corporate Radcliffe expands our understanding of early nineteenth-century Russian literary history through specific case studies that demonstrate the significant role played by both women writers and translation, an aspect of this history that is often overlooked.


Author(s):  
Pieter Vierestraete ◽  
Ylva Söderfeldt

Careful analysis of underexplored and neglected case studies demonstrates how an initial interest in the behavior and constitution of early-nineteenth-century deaf-blind persons gradually made possible a professional and impersonal approach. The deaf-blind person in the early nineteenth century had been a creature of mostly unrefined, but therefore authentic, sensory experience, whose reduction to the supposedly simpler senses of smell, touch, and taste made the basic nature of humankind appear more clearly. In contrast, the educated deaf-blind person later in the century was a vessel for the display of pedagogic expertise. The institutionalization of special education for deaf-blind persons in western Europe thus can be characterized by a shift from listening to the “sound” of deaf-blind persons to a mere repetition of the discursive “noise” of professionals.


Author(s):  
David Matthews

This chapter describes the rediscovery and reinvention of the ballad in the 1760s and 1770s, tracing the later impact of the resultant conception of the Middle Ages on nineteenth-century literature and scholarship. The chapter traces the way in which a notion of the ‘Gothic’ was differentiated, in the early nineteenth century, from the ‘medieval’ (a word newly coined around 1817) and goes on to look at the way in which the early beginnings of English literary history resulted from the antiquarian researches of the eighteenth century. It concludes with reflections on the extent to which it can be said there was truly a revival of the ballad, and posits that there was instead a revaluation something already there, with a new conferral of prestige.


2016 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-191
Author(s):  
Lydia G. Fash

This essay calls attention to the genre of the sketch, which played a critical role in the early nineteenth-century US literary market. Later when developments in printing technology made it easier to publish longer works, Hawthorne, Melville, and Stowe used the sketch as the basis for hugely important mid-century novels.


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