The Politics of Literary History: Literary Historiography in Russia, Latvia, the Czech Republic and Finland after 1990

Steinby, Liisa; Kalnačs, Benedikts; Oshukov, Mikhail; Parente-Čapková, Viola

This book looks at literary historiography in Russia, Latvia, the Czech Republic and Finland, focusing on how seismic shifts in state politics and ideology after 1990 changed the writing of national literary histories in these countries. While Russia saw a return to a more nationalist way of thinking about literature and a new emphasis on Orthodox religion after the fall of the Soviet Union, the opposite is true for Latvia, the Czech Republic and Finland. In these countries, literary historiography fosters connections between Western scholarship and literatures written in the national language and engages with questions such as transnationalism, minorities, culture and power, and the cultural construction of identities. This book scrutinizes the different ways in which the construction of national, cultural and European identities has occurred in and through the literary historiography of North-Eastern Europe in the last few decades.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2025-02-08

Format: Paperback

ISBN-13: 9783031187261

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-18724-7

Dimensions: 210cm x148cm

Pages: 408