scholarly journals The Reception of Olivia Manning’s The Great Fortune in Romania

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-29
Author(s):  
Cristina Zimbroianu

Manning’s (1908-1980) novel The Great Fortune (1960) is the first Second World War novel of a six-part novel series titled Fortunes of War. Set in Bucharest, Romania, the novel portrays the historical events of the first year of the war (1939-1940) and how these affect Romanian society and the English community. The novel was well-received in England, and in 1987 was adapted to a television serial issued by BBC. In Romania, the response of the critics after the communist regime was rather harsh, accusing Manning of misinterpreting Romanian reality. Moreover, considering that Manning portrays not only the wealth of high society but also the misery and the political conflicts of those times with the fascist Guard in the background, it could be stated that in 1960 when the novel was reviewed by the censorship board, it might not have been positively evaluated. Therefore, this article analyses the reception of The Great Fortune in Romania during and after the Communist regime from a historical perspective focusing on critics and censors’ responses to determine whether censorship influenced the reception of the novel in Romania. To undertake this study the censorship files located at the National Archives in Bucharest, as well as articles guarded in various libraries in Romania, were consulted.   Keywords: Manning, Second World War, Romania, Bucharest, censorship, criticism, history, reception studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-146
Author(s):  
Karin Wolgast

Abstract Introducing life and work of Janina Katz, the article undertakes an analysis and interpretation of her second novel, the autofictional Putska. Born on the second of March 1939, Katz belonged to a renowned Jewish family with numerous members, of whom, however, only her mother and she survived the Second World War. Their extraordinary family history may be traced in practically all of Katz’ writings, as can her Jewish cultural heritage. The novel Putska is no exception. Its composition, characters and the image it gives of life in Cracow are examined in order to make understandable the protagonist’s decision to exile herself from Poland and migrate to Denmark, much like the author herself. 1969, having fled from that revival of anti-Semite harassment which was launched by the political leadership of socialist Poland, Katz was granted asylum in Denmark, where she soon learned the language to a perfection which enabled her to unfold a widely acknowledged literary work which does not cease to speak of her unique life experience. Central perspectives on her life and work include migration, autobiography, Jewishness and social and cultural history of Poland.


1990 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Jenson

AbstractThis article utilizes the “regulation approach” in order to rethink the origins and resolution of crisis. It provides an account of the political conflicts of the 1930s and 1940s which gave rise to a model of development in Canada which can be labelled “permeable fordism.” Rapid economic growth after the Second World War had specific national traits but these were based on wage relations and macro-economic policies similar to other countries which have been labelled fordist. The political compromise of Canada's “fordism” was, in contrast, quite different. The compromise was based on a new national discourse more than on one stressing the capital-labour relationship and organized by class-based parties. The article demonstrates how these differences were rooted in the political conflict of the 1930s and 1940s, the moment when the earlier model of development came apart around the challenges posed to Canadian federalism by the Depression and the Second World War.


Werkwinkel ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 93-122
Author(s):  
Willem Bant

AbstractIn 1949, the Dutch publishing house A.J.G. Strengholt’s Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V. published the novel Dorstig paradijs. Through the eyes of Evelien van Eerdhuysen, the young, Dutch, female protagonist, author Adriaan Hulshoff presented an image of postwar Curaçao. In general, Dutch reviews of Hulshoff’s novel were quite positive and mentioned, for instance, the realistic representation of the island. Reviews published on Curaçao were very negative. At the moment the novel was published, Curaçao was fully in the news, because of the deliberations about the political status of the Dutch islands in the Caribbean. The question can be raised whether the image of Curaçao presented by Hulshoff was widespread in the Netherlands and representative of the way the Dutch looked at their Caribbean colonial possessions. One of the reasons why the book got much attention had to do with the name of the author who was hiding behind the pseudonym Adriaan Hulshoff. Most probably it was the well-known female writer Jo van Ammers-Küller, who after the Second World War, was banned from publishing because of collaborating with the Germans.


Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-281
Author(s):  
Dubravka Stojanović

AbstractThe author comments on the political and economic options in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that started at the beginning of 2020. She revisits responses to the crises of the First World War, the Great Crash of 1929, and the Second World War, sorting them into ‘pessimistic’ and ‘optimistic’ responses, and outlining their respective consequences.


Africa ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Cinnamon

ABSTRACTThrough narratives of an anti-‘fetish’ movement that swept through north-eastern Gabon in the mid-1950s, the present article traces the contours of converging political and religious imaginations in that country in the years preceding independence. Fang speakers in the region make explicit connections between the arrival of post-Second World War electoral politics, the anti-fetish movements, and perceptions of political weakening and marginalization of their region on the eve of independence. Rival politicians and the colonial administration played key roles in the movement, which brought in a Congolese ritual expert, Emane Boncoeur, and his two powerful spirits, Mademoiselle and Mimbare. These spirits, later recuperated in a wide range of healing practices, continue to operate today throughout northern Gabon and Rio Muni. In local imaginaries, these spirits played central roles in the birth of both regional and national politics, paradoxically strengthening the colonial administration and Gabonese auxiliaries in an era of pre-independence liberalization. Thus, regional political events in the 1950s rehearsed later configurations of power, including presidential politics, on the national stage.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-161
Author(s):  
Allan Hepburn

Over her career, Elizabeth Bowen published ten novels, yet she left no comprehensive theory of the novel. This essay draws especially upon ‘Notes on Writing a Novel’ (1945), ‘The Technique of the Novel’ (1953), and ‘Truth and Fiction’ (1956), as well as opinions that Bowen expressed in her weekly book columns for The Tatler, to formulate her key perceptions of, and rules for, writing a novel. Bowen defined her ideas by drawing upon the empirical evidence of novels by Elizabeth Taylor, Olivia Manning, H.E. Bates, Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, and numerous others. She gave particular thought to ‘situation’, by which she means the central problematic or the crux of the story. The situation precedes and fuels plot. The Second World War, Bowen claimed in her essays and reviews, had a decisive influence on heroism and contemporary fiction by heightening its scale and its repertory of situations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Myroslav Shkandrij

<p class="EW-abstract"><strong>Abstract:</strong> When Dokia Humenna’s novel depicting the Second World War, <em>Khreshchatyi iar</em> (Khreshchatyk Ravine), was published in New York in 1956, it created a controversy. Readers were particularly interested in the way activists of the OUN were portrayed. This article analyzes readers’ comments and Humenna’s responses, which are today stored in the archives of the Ukrainian Academy of Science in New York. The novel is based on a diary Humenna kept during the German occupation of Kyiv in the years 1941-1943.</p><strong>Keywords: </strong>Dokia Humenna, <em>Khreshchatyi iar</em>, Second World War, OUN, Émigré Literature, Reader Response


Infolib ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 66-69
Author(s):  
Madina Muxamedjanova ◽  

This article gives an overview of the main funds and documents of the National Archives of Uzbekistan containing information on the history of the Second World War. These archival materials are a valuable source for studying the history of the war and the great contribution of Uzbekistan to the Victory in the Second World War.


2020 ◽  

The historical consciousness of the peoples of Europe is still being shaped by their own national histories. The question of the political order that prevailed during the interwar years has remained a perennial issue among historians. The dominant hallmark of this prelude to the Second World War was the rise of dictatorships and the question of whether we can characterise this period as one of uninterrupted crisis. This collection of studies examines the quest for a new European order and the interconnections between domestic and foreign policy during the 1920s and 1930s. It collates different national perspectives in a single volume and asks searching questions about the consequences of the decisions made during the period under examination. With contributions by Dragan Bakić, Maciej Górny, Kurt Hager, János Hóvári, Georg Kastner, Miklos Lojko, Markus Meckel, Ulrich Schlie, Christian Schmidt, Thomas Weber and Werner Weidenfeld.


War Tourism ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 213-226
Author(s):  
Bertram M. Gordon

The study of memory tourism to war sites should not exclude the study of tourism during wartime. Both are components of war tourism, imparting meaning to war for both victors and vanquished. Both reflect their eras, whether through the gazes of the curious individual or the political and economic configurations sustaining the tourism industry. Germans who described a newfound appreciation of their homeland after touring occupied France show how tourism worked in two directions, impacting not only on the sites visited but also the self-image of the visitor. Local governments in France now reach a larger tourism public with new technology. A powerful hold of Second World War imagery in France continues to face ethical issues of sustainability and trivialization.


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