Markku Lehtimäki

Sofi Oksanen is the most visible and widely discussed Finnish author of the 21st century, yet her novels have gained less attention than her public performances. This study shifts the focus from the author’s persona to her literary art, proposing to read Oksanen’s fiction from the methodological viewpoint of the rhetorical theory of narrative. Accordingly, Oksanen’s six novels published to date – Stalinin lehmät, Baby Jane, Puhdistus, Kun kyyhkyset katosivat, Norma, and Koirapuisto – are considered as examples of authorial rhetoric and ethics, as narrative and textual constructions, and as affective readerly experiences. Instead of only following the rhetorical theory’s emphasis on character, plot, and progression, however, the study develops a new kind of narrative rhetoric, which also pays attention to language and politics. In the study, Sofi Oksanen emerges as a feminist narrative artist, who employs fiction as a serious rhetorical resource in order to say something worthwhile about the past history as well as the contemporary world.

Kertomus, etiikka, retoriikka

Sofi Oksasen romaanitaide

Arja Rosenholm

Elena Trubina

Nina Tynkkynen

This book addresses the Arctic and the northern regions by exploring cold waters and northern seascapes. It focuses on cultural discourses and artistic representations concerning the human experience and imagination of how the Arctic Ocean has been explored and used. It aims to assess what is specific to the northern waters vis-à-vis other sea and water areas in the world. The contextual background is provided by the fundamental shift from terra-based thinking towards aqua-based thinking, including the histories of the northern waters and the innovative ocean studies of the last decades. This book will be of interest to readers in Arctic studies and Sea and Ocean studies (including those with interests in literature, history, cultural and film studies, anthropology and politics), Environmental History and Cultural studies as well as in Russian studies. The book has been assembled with a view towards upper-level undergraduate and post-graduate students and scholars and will also be appropriate for courses in the fields mentioned above. The book will be of interest to specialists working in and with Arctic environmental issues. There is a broad array of international academic networks, environmental, governance and cultural associations outside academia whose members may also find the book of interest.

Tangible and Symbolic Seascapes of the North

Cold Waters

Vlad Strukov

Privileging the visual as the main method of communication and meaning-making, this book responds critically to the worldwide discussion about the Arctic and the North, addressing the interrelated issues of climate change, ethics and geopolitics. A multi-disciplinary, multi-modal exploration of the Arctic, it supplies an original conceptualization of the Arctic as a visual world encompassing an array of representations, imaginings, and constructions. By examining a broad range of visual forms, media and forms such as art, film, graphic novels, maps, media, and photography, the book advances current debates about visual culture. The book enriches contemporary theories of the visual taking the Arctic as a spatial entity and also as a mode of exploring contemporary and historical visual practices, including imaginary constructions of the North. Original contributions include case studies from all the countries along the Arctic shore, with Russian material occupying a large section due to the country’s impact on the region

Imagining Shimmering Worlds in Culture, Literature and Politics

Visual Representations of the Arctic

Hanna Meretoja

veden merkitykset kirjallisuudessa

Veteen kirjoitettu

Laura Karttunen

Maria Mäkelä

Recent postclassical narratology has constructed top-down reading models that often remain blind to the frame-breaking potential of individual literary narratives. Narrative, Interrupted goes beyond the macro framing typical of postclassical narratology and sets out to sketch approaches more sensitive to generic specificities, disturbing details and authorial interference. Unlike the mainstream cognitive approaches or even the emergent unnatural narratology, the articles collected here explore the artifice involved in presenting something ordinary and realistic in literature. The first section of the book deals with anti-dynamic elements such as dialogue, details, private events and literary boredom. The second section, devoted to extensions of cognitive narratology, addresses spatiotemporal oddities and the possibility of non-human narratives. The third section focuses on frame-breaking, fragmentarity and problems of authorship in the works of Vladimir Nabokov. The book presents readings of texts ranging from the novels of Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon to the Animal Man comics. The common denominator for the texts discussed is the interruption of the chain of events or of the experiential flow of human-like narrative agents.

The Plotless, the Disturbing and the Trivial in Literature

Narrative, Interrupted

Markku Lehtimäki

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