This open access book uses Swedish literature and the Swedish publishing field as recurring examples todescribe and analyse the role of the literary semi-peripheral position in world literature from various perspectives and on meso, micro and macro levels, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. This includes the role of translation in the semi-periphery and the conditions under which literature travels to and from that position. The focus is not on Sweden, as such, but rather on the semi-peripheral transitional space as exemplified by the Swedish case.
Consisting of three co-written chapters, this study sheds light on what might be called the semi-peripheral condition or the semi-periphery as an area of transition. As part of the Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures series, it makes continuous use of the concepts of 'cosmopolitan' and 'vernacular' – or rather, the processual terms, cosmopolitanization and vernacularization – which provide an overall structure to the analysis of literature and literary phenomena. In this way, the authors show that the semi-periphery is an ideal point of departure to further the understanding of world literature, because it is a place where the cosmopolitan (the literary universal) and the vernacular (the rootedness in a particular culture or place) interact in ways that have not yet been thoroughly explored.
Against the philosophical thought that has traversed the centuries, and which consists of placing women on the side of the “lack” and weakness, Agustina Bessa-Luís positions female characters of her oeuvre on the side of power. This work proposes to analyze some emblematic characters of the author's work, demonstrating how they managed to find new forms of existence which allow them to be detached from the male circle of influence. We will claim, through an analysis of the novels A Sibila, O Mosteiro and O Concerto dos Flamengos, that the reinvestment of themes related to woman condition, such as celibacy and virginity, calls into question the obligatory bond between women and men, as the foundation of their existence, and shakes the foundations of the patriarchal order that rules Portuguese society.
Au long du roman Os transparentes l’auteur angolais Ondjaki file de multiples métaphores autour de la corporalité ou du corps, tant sensuel que social et politique, comme lieu d’expression de tous les travers de la société luandaise contemporaine. La thématique du corps est ainsi déclinée sous diverses facettes, que ce soit la ville de Luanda, dont le corps est percé de cratères et d’excavations en vue de prospections pétrolières, ou encore, le corps du personnage d’Odonato, figure emblématique s’il en est, dont le corps est progressivement frappé de transparence, due à un « jeûne social » selon les termes du personnage. Ce corps transparent donne voix à l’expression d’une conscience, dans la mesure où celui-ci devient le symbole de l’invisibilité sociale de tout un peuple face à une élite luandaise gangrénée par la corruption ou la recherche de profits personnels.
Nous nous proposons donc de porter notre regard sur la relation qu’Ondjaki établit dans son roman entre le corps des individus/ corps social angolais et la question de l’identité, ceci à l’aune des idées portées par les études culturelles et post-coloniales.
The present study aims to test my hypothesis that the language forms found in the Blocos Afro discourses in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil can be seen as expressions of Afro-Brazilian and/or Blocos Afro identity work and can also be seen as being, at least thematically, connected to the negritude movement. The study is based on samples created of Blocos Afro lyrics. As a selection of Blocos Afro I chose Ilê Ayiê, Cortejo Afro and Olodum, which are all well recognized and with a long tradition presenting themselves in Salvador. In total the analysis was made from 31942 words and/or 250 lyrics. A pilot was used to create a framework to select and identify expressions and language forms attested to be associated with the Afro-Brazilian identity. I relied on quantitative and qualitative approaches to the analyses. First, I categorized the expressions from the different lyrics by using a word cloud application which provides an overview of word frequency in a given corpus and can be used to underpin qualitative analyses. By using word cloud the frequency of words in the total corpus of 250 lyrics and particular lyrics was analyzed. Based on this analysis of the frequency of use of expression and language forms, I carried out a thematic analysis of the discourses and compared the themes to salient themes of negritude. The results show that the Afro-Brazilian identity in Salvador is thematically connected to the negritude movement and that the Afro-Blocos lyrics analyzed show identity work a strong ingroup perspective.
Theoretically positioned at the intersections between human geography, ethnography of space and place, and Linguistic Landscape Studies (LLS), this ethnographically grounded study mediates a dialogue between LLS and Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology and shows how the intersubjective dimension of the habitus provides a powerful lens with which to explore the people-place relation, central to disentangling the political economy of language and place. Inspired by existing ethnographically and people-centered LLS, the study is set in Maputo city, well-known for its enduring social and spatial division from colonial to postcolonial times. The analyses foreground the people-place relation in different sites across the material and non-material urban geographies. By relocating LLS, the study challenges modernist notions of divides, foregrounding the often-neglected invisible embodied dynamics of conflicting schemata - fundamental to the understanding of the reciprocal people-in-place relationship and the spatialization of inequalities, thus offering a rich and thick LLS. © 2023 John Benjamins Publishing Company.
This thesis presents a reading of the animal in the short stories “The Buffalo” and “The Crime of the Mathematics Teacher” by the Brazilian author Clarice Lispector. The aim is to explore the roles of the animals in these stories and how they challenge anthropocentric notions of the human-animal relationship. While the animal is the primary focus, this thesis also incorporates a gender perspective. The analysis is guided by the following questions: What are the roles of the animals and why are they present? How are gender roles portrayed and how does the construct of gender interact with the construct of the animal? What does the presence of the animals in the stories suggest about the human-animal relationship in general? This thesis employs a posthumanist framework and draws mainly on theories by Jacques Derrida and Donna Haraway. The methodological approach involves a close reading and a metonymic reading where the animal is seen as physically present in the story. The analysis explores how the animal gazes remind the human protagonists of their corporeality and their embodied existence, encouraging a broader reflection on the moral and ethical responsibility towards non-human species.
The aim of this essay is to explore the hypothesis that interperipheralliterary circulation is achieved through support frominstitutional funders who are situated outside the target cultureand mainly in the source culture – so called ‘supply-driventranslation’. By focusing on Swedish translations of Italian andPortuguese (Angola, Cabo Verde, East Timor, Mozambique, andPortugal) language literatures this study investigates whethersupport from the source culture provides an alternative pathwayfor this literature to make its way into the hands of Swedishreaders, including scholars. First, this study reviews the availablefunding for this literature and maps out which publishing houses,authors, and titles received financial support between 2000 and2018. The analysis focuses on the support from institutions thatare closely related to two of the source countries (Italy andPortugal) and addresses questions regarding the prestige andgender of the supported authors, the size of the publishinghouses, previous translations into English, and how this supportinfluences visibility in the public literary sphere and in theSwedish press. Translations and publications of Portugueselanguage literatures depended on and received financial support,whereas translations and publications of Italian literature werelargely produced without any financial support. However, inmany respects, the source languages show striking similarities.