What happens with stories when they are transmitted from one place to another, when they are retold, remade, translated and retranslated? What happens with the scholars themselves, when they try to grapple with the kaleidoscopic diversity of human expression in a constantly changing world?
These and related questions are explored in the chapters of this edited volume, Narratives Crossing Borders: The Dynamics of Cultural Interaction (Editors: Herbert Jonsson, Lovisa Berg, Chatarina Edfeldt, Bo G. Jansson).
It is about travelers and their identities – narratives that pass over national, language and ethnical borders, constantly on the move. Its overall topic includes studies about transcultural novels, poetry, drama, and the narratives of journalism.
Beyond the well-known Western frameworks
There is a broad geographic diversity, not only in the collection as a whole, but also in each of the single contributions. This in turn demands a multitude of theoretical and methodological approaches, which cover a spectrum of concepts from such different sources as post-colonial studies, linguistics, religion, aesthetics, art, and media studies, often going beyond the well-known Western frameworks.
Most of the chapters are case studies of specific works and authors, like Miriam Toews, Yoko Tawada, Javier Moreno, Leila Abouela, Marguerite Duras, Kyoko Mori, Francesca Duranti, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, Riibi Hideo, and François Cheng. The works of these authors are studied from a variety of perspectives.
Some chapters deal with code-switching in West African novels, border crossing in the Japanese noh drama, translational anthologies of Italian literature, urban legends on the US-Mexico border, migration in German children’s books, and war trauma in poetry.
This volume may not only be of interest for specialists, but also for the general reader.
Stockholm Studies in Culture and Aesthetics
Narratives Crossing Borders is a volume of Stockholm Studies in Culture and Aesthetics, a peer-reviewed series of monographs and edited volumes published by Stockholm University Press.
How to access this book
At the Stockholm University Press website you can download an ePub or pdf-file that allows you to read the book online or access it on multiple devices. You may also also order a print copy of the book through the DOI-link: https://doi.org/10.16993/bbj
About the publisher Stockholm University Press
Stockholm University Press is an open access publisher of peer-reviewed academic journals and books. We aim to make journals and books affordable, and to give them the widest possible dissemination, so that researchers around the world can find and access the information they need without barriers.
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