For all of the scholarship done on postcolonial literatures, little has been applied to Scandinavian writing. Yet, beginning with the onset of tourism beyond Scandinavia in the 1840s, a compelling body of prose works documents Scandinavian attitudes toward foreign countries and further shows how these Scandinavian travelers sought to portray themselves to uncharted cultures. Focusing on Danish and Norwegian travelogues, Elisabeth Oxfeldt traces the evolution of Scandinavian travel writing over two centuries using pivotal texts from each era, including works by Hans Christian Andersen, Knut Hamsun, and Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen). Oxfeldt situates each one in its historical and geopolitical context, and her close readings delineate how each travelogue reflects Scandinavia’s ongoing confrontation between Self and the non-European cultural Other. A long-overdue examination of travel literature produced by some of Denmark and Norway’s greatest writers, Journeys from Scandinavia unpacks the unstable constructions of Scandinavian cultural and national identity and, in doing so, complicates the common assumption of a homogeneous, hegemonic Scandinavia.
Format: Hardback
CONTRIBUTORS: Elisabeth Oxfeldt
EAN: 9780816656349
COUNTRY: United States
PAGES: 328
WEIGHT:
HEIGHT: 216 mm
PUBLISHED BY: University of Minnesota Press
DATE PUBLISHED: 2010-09-14
CITY:
GENRE: HISTORY / Europe / Nordic Countries, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / Scandinavian, TRAVEL / Essays & Travelogues
WIDTH: 140 mm
SPINE:
Book Themes:
Northern Europe, Scandinavia, Literature: history and criticism, European history, Travel writing
Elisabeth Oxfeldt is associate professor at the University of Oslo and the author of Nordic Orientalism.