Full Description
Critical Approaches to Sjón: North of the Sun is the first English-language book-length study of the works of the Icelandic contemporary poet Sjón (Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson, b. 1962), who is considered by some to be Iceland's most distinctive and multifaceted contemporary author. This collection of essays introduces readers to Sjón's rich body of writing and its transmedial and stylistic range, cultural breadth, thematic diversity, and intellectual depth. Essays in the volume have been brought together from around the world and cover Sjóns's beginnings as a neo-surrealist performance artist and poet (translated into over 20 languages), his career as a novelist (translated into over 30 languages), and his collaborations with translators, singer-songwriters, film directors, and other writers. Approaches range from the narratological, historical, ethical, epistemological, and mythological to theoretical methodologies such as thing theory, queer theory, disability studies, and ecocriticism.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
A Note on Translation
Introduction
Linda Badley, Úlfhildur Dagsdóttir, and Gitte Mose
Part I: The Voices of Sjón
1. The Pleasures and Challenges of Recreating Sjón's Voice
Victoria Cribb
2. The Author is In: Moonstone, Authorship, Reading, and Intertextuality (or The Boy Who Became a Story)
Úlfhildur Dagsdóttir
Part II: Surrealism
3. Oh! Sjón, the Poet 1978-1986
Erik Skyum-Nielsen
4. Sjón's Nuclear Dystopia: Reflections on Stálnótt, Medúsa, and Johnny Triumph's Musical Career
Jón Karl Helgason
5. "Beneath the veil of happenings": Sjón, the Norse Visionary of Surrealism's Deep History
Delia Ungureanu
Part III: Transmedia, Miscellanea
6. Moonstone: The Cinema that Always Was
Janica Tomić
7. Sjón at the Movies
Björn Nordfjörd
8. The Drop Tower, the Roller Coaster, the Whirling Cups: Sjón-Miscellanea and Things
Gitte Mose
Part IV: History, Ethics, Politics, and Storytelling
9. Sjón and the Long Icelandic Medieval Past
Carolyne Larrington
10. Transnational and Counter-Memorial Practices: Antisemitism, Nationalism, and the Second World War in Sjón's Works
Gunnþórunn Guðmundsdóttir
11. The Narratable Self: Natality and the Politics of Storytelling in CoDex 1962
Anne Fogarty
Part V: Queer Ecologies: Hybridity, Disability, Ecopoetics
12. The End of the World as We Know It: Queerness and Utopias in Sjón's Poetry and Prose
Asta Kristin Benediktsdóttir
13. Human-Animal Bodies in The Blue Fox and CoDex1962
Avril Tynan
14. Sjónian Ecopoetics
Linda Badley
Epilogue: Sjón in His Own Voice
Appendix: A Chronology of Sjón's Life and Writings
Index
