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List of contents
Acknowledgements
Series Introduction – The Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Dynamic: Conjunctions of World Literature
Stefan Helgesson (Stockholm University, Sweden), Christina Kulberg (Uppsala University, Sweden), Paul Tenngart (Lund University, Sweden) and Helena Wulff (Stockholm University, Sweden)
1. Introduction: The Cosmopolitan, the Vernacular and the Semi-periphery
2. Infrastructure of the Semi-peripheral Exchange
3. Translators of Nobel Prize Literature
4. Translation Strategies to and from the Literary Semi-periphery: Reduction Retention, Replacement
5. Positioning the Swedish Literary Semi-periphery
6. General Conclusion
References
Index
About the author
Chatarina Edfeldt is Senior Lecturer of Portuguese Literature at Dalarna University, Sweden.Erik Falk has a doctorate in English literature and is Collaboration Coordinator at Södertörn University, Sweden.Andreas Hedberg is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature at Uppsala University, Sweden. His research interests include sociology of literature, world literature, processes of canonization and literature as critique of modernization.Yvonne Lindqvist is Professor of Translation Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. She works mainly within the framework of Descriptive Translation Studies and the Sociology of Translation.Cecilia Schwartz is Associate Professor of Italian Literature at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research is focused on transnational and translational aspects of Italian literature: how Italian literature circulates and reaches Swedish readers through translators, introducers, publishers, libraries and universities.Paul Tenngart is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Lund University, Sweden. He has published several books and articles on Swedish and French poetry, politics and ideology in 20th century Swedish literature, literary translations from Swedish to English, translation patterns from and to semi-peripheral positions and Anthropocene fiction. His latest book is Northern Crossings: Translation, Circulation and the Literary Semi-periphery (Bloomsbury 2022), co-written with Chatarina Edfeldt, Erik Falk, Andreas Hedberg, Yvonne Lindqvist and Cecilia Schwartz.
Summary
This open access book uses Swedish literature and the Swedish publishing field as recurring examples todescribe and analyse the role of the literary semi-peripheral position in world literature from various perspectives and on meso, micro and macro levels, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. This includes the role of translation in the semi-periphery and the conditions under which literature travels to and from that position. The focus is not on Sweden, as such, but rather on the semi-peripheral transitional space as exemplified by the Swedish case.
Consisting of three co-written chapters, this study sheds light on what might be called the semi-peripheral condition or the semi-periphery as an area of transition. As part of the Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures series, it makes continuous use of the concepts of 'cosmopolitan' and 'vernacular' – or rather, the processual terms, cosmopolitanization and vernacularization – which provide an overall structure to the analysis of literature and literary phenomena. In this way, the authors show that the semi-periphery is an ideal point of departure to further the understanding of world literature, because it is a place where the cosmopolitan (the literary universal) and the vernacular (the rootedness in a particular culture or place) interact in ways that have not yet been thoroughly explored.
The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.
Foreword
Explores semi-peripheral literary cultures and their relations to the cosmopolitan and the vernacular, using the Swedish context as a case study.
Additional text
By framing Sweden as a "semi-peripheral" space of world literary networks, Northern Crossings opens up new cross-ways of scrutinizing translation-flows, creation of readerships and recognition of literary works through the Nobel Prize in the public sphere. An interesting co-authored work which underscores benefits of collaborative work in World Literature Studies.
