Facing the East in the West : images of Eastern Europe in British literature, film and culture / / edited by Barbara Korte, Eva Ulrike Pirker and Sissy Helff.

• Superior document: Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft ; 138
• TeilnehmendeR: Korte, Barbara.; Pirker, Eva Ulrike.; Helff, Sissy.
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft ; 138.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (469 p.)
• Notes: Includes index.

Over the last decade, migration flows from Central and Eastern Europe have become an issue in political debates about human rights, social integration, multiculturalism and citizenship in Great Britain. The increasing number of Eastern Europeans living in Britain has provoked ambivalent and diverse responses, including representations in film and literature that range from travel writing, humorous fiction, mockumentaries, musicals, drama and children’s literature to the thriller. The present volume discusses a wide range of representations of Eastern and Central Europe and its people as reflected in British literature, film and culture. The book offers new readings of authors who have influenced the cultural imagination since the nineteenth century, such as Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad and Arthur Koestler. It also discusses the work of more contemporary writers and film directors including Sacha Baron Cohen, David Cronenberg, Vesna Goldsworthy, Kapka Kassabova, Marina Lewycka, Ken Loach, Mike Phillips, Joanne K. Rowling and Rose Tremain. With its focus on post-Wall Europe, Facing the East in the West goes beyond discussions of migration to Britain from an established postcolonial perspective and contributes to the current exploration of 'new' European identities.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Facing the East of Europe in Its Western Isles: Charting Backgrounds, Questions and Perspectives / Barbara Korte -- Infinite Mirrorings: Russia and Eastern Europe as the West’s “Other” / Elisabeth Cheauré -- Narratives of Desire – A Writer’s Statement / Mike Phillips -- ‘A glimpse behind the scenes’, ‘trying to capture the very soul of things Russian’: Literary Representations of Intercultural East-West Encounters in Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes / Christiane Bimberg -- From Bulgaria with Love and Hate: The Anxiety of the Distorting Mirror (A Writer’s Perspective) / Kapka Kassabova -- Our Names Long and Foreign / Kapka Kassabova -- The Travel Guide to the Country of Your Birth / Kapka Kassabova -- To Russia with Love: Maurice Baring (1874-1945) / Elmar Schenkel -- A Russian Romance: 1930's British Writers as Wishful Participants in the Soviet Revolution / Dirk Wiemann -- From Euphoria to Disillusionment: Representations of Communism and the Soviet Union in Arthur Koestler’s The Invisible Writing / Sissy Helff -- The Unfinished Revolution: Black Perceptions of Eastern Europe / Eva Ulrike Pirker -- Looking Eastwards: Borders and Border-Crossing in the Work of Ken Smith / Cinzia Mozzato -- You Think You Know Me But You Don’t – An Introduction / Eva Ulrike Pirker -- Balkanisms Old and New: The Discourse of Balkanism and Self-Othering in Vesna Goldsworthy’s Chernobyl Strawberries and Inventing Ruritania / Vedrana Veličković -- A Troubled Union: Representations of Eastern Europe in Nineteenth-Century Irish Protestant Literature / Michael McAteer -- ‘The Russians could no longer be the heavies’: From Russia with Love and the Cold War in the Bond Series / Jonas Takors -- ‘Vulchanov! Volkov! Aaaaaaand Krum!’: Joanne K. Rowling’s “Eastern” Europe / Wolfgang Hochbruck , Elmo Feiten and Anja Tiedemann -- Between Dream and Nightmare: Representation of Eastern Diaspora in Eastern Promises / Nadia Butt -- Taking Embarrassment to Its Extremes: Borat and Cultural Anxiety / Susanne Schmid -- Immigrants, Stereotypes and the New Ireland: Czech Identity in and in Response to the Film Once / Martin Hermann -- Gypsies and Their Representation: Louise Doughty’s Stone Cradle and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green / Christian Schmitt-Kilb -- Can the Polish Migrant Speak? The Representation of “Subaltern” Polish Migrants in Film, Literature and Music from Britain and Poland / Joanna Rostek and Dirk Uffelmann -- Images of Poles and Poland in The Guardian, 2003-2005 / Przemysław Wilk -- “Old Poles” and “New Blacks”: The Polish Immigrant Experience in Britain / Marie-Luise Egbert -- British Geographies in the Eastern European Mind: Rose Tremain’s The Road Home / Corina Crişu -- West Faces East: Images of Eastern Europe in Recent Short Fiction / Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz -- ‘Under Western Eyes’: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the Fiction of Martin Amis, Nicholas Shakespeare and Carl Tighe / Michael Szczekalla -- Images of Lithuania in Stephan Collishaw’s Novels / Ingrida Žindžiuvienė -- Tourist in Her Native Country: Kapka Kassabova’s Street Without a Name / Claudia Duppé -- Eastern European Memories? The Novels of Marina Lewycka / Doris Lechner -- Interview with Marina Lewycka / Doris Lechner -- Notes on Contributors -- Index.