European Writers in Exile

Edited by Robert C. Hauhart and Jeff Birkenstein - Contributions by Katherine Ashley; Katarzyna Bałżewska; Rowena Clarke; Johannes Evelein; Charlotte Fiehn; Irina Golovacheva; Shmuel Lederman; Liani Lochner; Kelly C. MacPhail; Brindusa Nicolaescu; Marion Rohrleitner; Svetlana Stefanova; Rossitsa Terzieva-Artemis and Andrea Gay Tyndall

European Writers in Exile collects a series of original essays that address the writers’ universal existential dilemma, when viewed through the lens of exile: who am I, where am I from, and what do I write, and to whom? While we often understand the term “exile” to refer to writers who have either been forced to leave their home country or region or chosen self-exile, this term need not be defined so narrowly, and the contributors to this volume explore a range of interesting and evolving definitions. Various countries in Europe have long been both a refuge for people and writers from many countries and a strife-torn region which has forced many to flee within the continent or beyond it. The phrase “in exile” involves writers moving across borders in multiple directions and for multiple reasons, including for reasons of duress or personal quest, and these themes are addressed and critiqued in these essays.

This volume naturally examines the cataclysmic and near-universal exilic experiences relating to the world wars, including essays on Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss. Additionally, essays address the unique early twentieth-century experiences of Emile Zola, Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad, and James Joyce. More contemporary essay subjects include Milan Kundera, Norman Manea, Eva Hoffman, Caryl Phillips, and W. G. Sebald.

This collection of transnational, globalized European literature studies envisions understanding the intersection of our contemporary world and various writers in exile in new cultural, historical, spatial, and epistemological frameworks. How does literary production in an increasingly globalized world—when seen from exile—affect a view back towards a country or region left behind? Or, conversely, how does exile push a writer to look outward to new (trans-)nationalized space(s)? These and other questions are important to investigate. Taken in sum, European Writers in Exile offers an academically rigorous, important, and cohesive volume.

Lexington Books

Pages: 304 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-6023-8 • Hardback • October 2018 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-4985-6024-5 • eBook • October 2018 • $134.50 • (£104.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / General, Literary Criticism / Modern / General, Literary Criticism / Comparative Literature

European Writers in Exile

Hardback

eBook

Summary

European Writers in Exile collects a series of original essays that address the writers’ universal existential dilemma, when viewed through the lens of exile: who am I, where am I from, and what do I write, and to whom? While we often understand the term “exile” to refer to writers who have either been forced to leave their home country or region or chosen self-exile, this term need not be defined so narrowly, and the contributors to this volume explore a range of interesting and evolving definitions. Various countries in Europe have long been both a refuge for people and writers from many countries and a strife-torn region which has forced many to flee within the continent or beyond it. The phrase “in exile” involves writers moving across borders in multiple directions and for multiple reasons, including for reasons of duress or personal quest, and these themes are addressed and critiqued in these essays.

This volume naturally examines the cataclysmic and near-universal exilic experiences relating to the world wars, including essays on Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss. Additionally, essays address the unique early twentieth-century experiences of Emile Zola, Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad, and James Joyce. More contemporary essay subjects include Milan Kundera, Norman Manea, Eva Hoffman, Caryl Phillips, and W. G. Sebald.

This collection of transnational, globalized European literature studies envisions understanding the intersection of our contemporary world and various writers in exile in new cultural, historical, spatial, and epistemological frameworks. How does literary production in an increasingly globalized world—when seen from exile—affect a view back towards a country or region left behind? Or, conversely, how does exile push a writer to look outward to new (trans-)nationalized space(s)? These and other questions are important to investigate. Taken in sum, European Writers in Exile offers an academically rigorous, important, and cohesive volume.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 304 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-6023-8 • Hardback • October 2018 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-4985-6024-5 • eBook • October 2018 • $134.50 • (£104.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / General, Literary Criticism / Modern / General, Literary Criticism / Comparative Literature

Author

Robert C. Hauhart is professor in the Department of Society and Social Justice at Saint Martin's University, Lacey.

Jeff Birkenstein is professor of English at Saint Martin's University, Lacey.

Table of Contents

Preface: On the Experience of Exile
Robert C. Hauhart and Jeff Birkenstein

1. Social Exile in Nineteenth Century England
Charlotte Fiehn

2. Zola’s English Exile: the Private Pages of a Public Author
Katherine Ashley

3. "All Europe contributed": Joseph Conrad's Experience and Representation of Exile
Kelly C. MacPhail

4. Thomas Mann – An American? From Fascination to Disillusionment – The Black Swan as a Literary Account of Mann’s Exile Experiences
Katarzyna Bałżewska

5. James Joyce, Dubliners, and Exile
Jeff Birkenstein

6. Franz Kafka’s Exile of the Mind
Robert C. Hauhart

7. Professor Pnin in Exile: Nabokov and the Liminal Experience of the Post-War Émigré Academic
Rowena Clarke

8. Specks in the City: Shklovsky and Nabokov in Berlin
Rossitsa Terzieva-Artemis

9. Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: The Tradition of Political Thought and the Modern Age
Shmuel Lederman

10. Arthur Koestler’s Fictional Self-Reflections of Exile
Andrea Gay Tyndall

11. In Search of the Doppelganger: Homecoming from Exile
Irina Golovacheva

12. Milan Kundera, the Novel, and the Problem of History
Liani Lochner

13.Norman Manea’s Exile between Predicament and Redemption
Brînduşa Nicolaescu

14. Lessons from Exile—Eva Hoffman as Theoretician and Practitioner of Otherness
Johannes Evelein

15. “Receive me kindly, stranger that I am”: W.G. Sebald’s Existential Exile
Marion Rohrleitner

16. Transnational Modes of Exile in Caryl Phillips’s Narratives: Or, What it Feels Like to be Both Of and Not Of
Svetlana Stefanova

Reviews

After a plethora of books on narrowly focused groups of literary exiles, literary exile destinations, or the conditions from which political, literary and other exiles have escaped, this volume does something very new and valuable. It examines the experience of exile, across time and geography, to provide readers with new ideas and angles to understand the phenomenon itself. Birkenstein and Hauhart have done a great service for all readers interested in exiled artists, and given us much to think about as we consider further research.
— Richard Bodek, College of Charleston

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