Full Description
This book develops our understanding of the global literary field in the long nineteenth century by discussing nine different places outside the established metropoles. It shows how different economic, geographical and political factors combined to give each place its own distinctive literary culture and symbolic capital. Taking a geocritical approach, the book shows how its different case studies can be seen as 'literary capitals' in terms of their role within the wider nation, region or empire. The volume is divided into three parts. Part One discusses Kolkata, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires. Part Two considers 'semi-peripheral' European cities: Pest-Buda (Budapest), Helsinki and Dublin. Part Three focuses on cities within Italy: Trieste, Florence and Rome. Drawing on a wide range of literary texts and different genres, the book reads the nineteenth-century literary field as a constellation where different connections can be plotted across various points on the map at different times.
Contents
Introduction: Literary Capitals in the Long Nineteenth Century Arunima Bhattacharya (University of Edinburgh), Richard Hibbitt (University of Leeds), Laura Scuriatti (Bard College Berlin).- Part I: Beyond Europe.- 1. Our Alexandria: Our City of Loss May Hawas (The American University in Cairo).- 2. Buenos Aires, Capital of the Spanish-American Nineteenth Century Alejandra Uslenghi (Northwestern University).- 3. Calcutta: The 'Second City' of the British Empire Hemlata Giri Loussier (Université d'Aix-Marseille).- 4. Producing the Colonial Capital: Calcutta in Handbooks Arunima Bhattacharya (University of Edinburgh).- Part II: Defining Peripheries.- 5. War and Feminism: Dublin's Days of Rabblement Catherine Toal (Bard College Berlin).- 6. Paris and Stockholm in the novels Illusions Perdues by Balzac and The Red Room by August Strindberg Annika Mörte Alling (Lund University).- 7. The Provincial Cosmopolis: Helsinki as Centre and Periphery Philip Bullock (Universityof Oxford).- 8. Bilingual Poets and Multilingual Printing Presses: Pest-Buda in the Early Nineteenth Century Zsuzsanna Varga (University of Glasgow).- 9. Geneva's Cosmopolitan Vistas: Art and Re-Imagining Nation in fin-de-siècle Franco-Swiss Artistic Exchange Juliet Simpson (Coventry University).- Part III: Polycentric Italy.- 10. Spatial, Cultural and National Anxieties in Nineteenth-Century Trieste Elena Coda (Purdue University).- 11. How to Become Modern in Florence: Another Capital at the Turn of the Century Laura Scuriatti (Bard College Berlin).- 12. The Literary Geopolitics of fin-de-siècle Rome: Foreign Literatures in the Periodical Press Stefano Evangelista (University of Oxford).
