Riikka Rossi

Pirjo Lyytikäinen

Viola Parente-Čapková

Mirjam Hinrikus

Nordic Literature of Decadence fills a gap on the map of world literature and participates in a thriving area of research by extending the investigation of broadly understood fin de siècle decadence to unexplored areas of Nordic literature, which remain practically unknown to Anglophone audiences. In the Nordic countries the new Parisian movements were seen as having caused a malicious invasion, a ‘black flood’ that was spreading over the North destroying the very foundations of Nordic national cultures. Nevertheless, the appeal of this controversial movement was irresistible to discontents and innovators, even in countries where the old moral, religious and nationalist atmosphere still retained its stranglehold and modern urban, industrial and social developments lagged behind that of the metropoles breeding this new literature and art. The Nordic countries developed their own distinctive manifestations of decadence favouring allegorical and allusive forms, local rural settings and depictions of primitive nature, coupling the philosophical underpinnings of fin-de-siècle decadence with ancient Nordic mythology and rising national movements. Nordic decadence thus became a distinctive and recognizable phenomenon, which travelled back to France and other European countries, influencing the ongoing debate on decadence as it was conducted on a global scale. Nordic Literature of Decadence discusses literature from five Nordic countries: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia and offers additional and alternative perspectives to the cosmopolitan traffic and cultural exchanges of literary decadence that have been explored so far in the English language scholarship.

Nordic Literature of Decadence

Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt

Marie-Sophie Armstrong

Re-Reading Zola and Worldwide Naturalism continues the discussion of Émile Zola and French naturalism with examinations of unexplored areas of the founding father’s project and legacy. In addition to offering essays on Zola’s lesser known naturalist contemporaries, the volume extends the investigation of the naturalist literary current to include areas of Europe outside France, as well as the Americas and Asia, tracking its persistence in various forms through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The authors pay particular attention to the ways naturalism was conceived and then received, including in other channels, undergoing transformations in new social conditions and creating other versions of the basic precepts. This work features multidisciplinary and comparative approaches to the study of naturalism, paying tribute to Anna Gural-Migdal—a Professor of French Literature and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, in Canada, who specializes in the visual aspect of Zola’s Rougon Macquart novels and the transfer of these strategies to naturalist film. She has been a leader in the field of Zola and naturalism in her role as president of the AIZEN for almost fifteen of its twenty years of existence.

Riikka Rossi

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