Locating August Strindberg's Prose : : Modernism, Transnationalism, and Setting / / Anna Westerstahl Stenport.

• VerfasserIn: Stenport, Anna Westerstahl,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2017]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (224 p.)

The setting of a novel is more than just an anonymous, interchangeable backdrop. In Locating August Strindberg's Prose, Anna Westerståhl Stenport argues that spatial setting is a key - though often neglected - tool for exploring the fundamentals of European literary modernism.Stenport examines the importance of location by exploring the prose of Swedish exile August Strindberg (1849-1912), challenging previous studies of the author that have focused on identity and subject formation. Strindberg wrote in both Swedish and French, situating his stories in various places across Europe - from Berlin to the French countryside, the Austrian Alps, and Stockholm - to purposely destabilize concepts of national belonging, language, and literary history. Close readings of Strindberg's prose find that his boundary-challenging narratives redefine and rewrite the meaning of a marginal literary identity. By contextualizing Strindberg against other early modernists, including Kafka, Conrad, Rilke, and Breton, Stenport emphasizes the burgeoning transnationality of literature at the turn of the last century.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. National Betrayal: Public, Private, and Railway Travel in A Madman's Defence -- 2. Rural Modernism: Ethnography, Photography, and Recollection in Among French Peasants -- 3. Parisian Streets, Pre-Surrealism, and Pastoral Landscapes in Inferno -- 4. Speed, Displacements, and Berlin Modernity in The Cloister -- 5. Recording, Habitation, and Colonial Imaginations in The Roofing Ceremony -- Works Cited -- Index