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Flexible Genders – Changing Meanings
Gender is now understood as something versatile and changing. It is seen as part of identity and as a means of expressing oneself, but it is also a product of social and cultural structures. The Kalevala Society Foundation’s Yearbook 103 Joustavat sukupuolet – muuttuvat merkitykset (Flexible Genders – Changing Meanings) explores the cultural contradictions, processes of change and persistence of gender and sexuality. The authors of the articles use their research materials to critically assess why and in what ways old ideas about gender are maintained and new ones are constructed – on the other hand, the same materials open up perspectives on what makes it possible to act and be differently. The authors come from the fields of folklore research, ethnology, and comparative literature.
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Metamodernism. The Change in Literature and Culture in 21st Century Finland maps the state and transformation of contemporary Finnish literature and culture since the postmodern era. The work highlights, from different perspectives, how this change and the metamodernism it represents are manifested in contemporary Finnish literature and culture. The collection aims to offer a broad understanding of how metamodernism is seen and implemented in Finnish culture. Metamodernism outlines the framework theoretically, conceptualizing the new phase as a nascent metamodernity that is taking shape on a global scale in different societies and cultures, especially in the Western world. The book’s 15 chapters, although the majority focus on literature, explore a wide range of genres including rap poetry, experimental poetry and prose, speculative fiction and children’s literature.
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Magic, Past and Present
Magic, Past and Present brings together the latest interdisciplinary research by Finnish scholars on magic and witchcraft. The authors come from fields such as history, art, literature, religion, and culture. Geographically, the articles are set in Finland and its surrounding areas, and the time span is from the Middle Ages to the present day. The book’s chapters discuss magic and magic-users in a wide context, from medieval church paintings and their portrayed gender roles to the neoshamanism and paganism of the present day. They also address issues such as witchcraft accusations from the perspective of othering and groundbreaking figures like one of the first Finnish female magicians at the turn of the 21st century. The book is intended for scholars in various humanities fields, such as history, religious studies, folklore, and literature. A general audience will also find the book thought-provoking and informative.
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Guests on Stage – Finnish and Estonian Theatre and Dance Relations
This book is a collaborative project by a joint Finnish-Estonian research team that explores Finnish and Estonian theatre and dance from the 19th to the 21st century and the rich interactions between the scenes of both countries. The aesthetic interactions have commonly been mixed with political and ideological objectives.
The book contributes to the recent debate on transnationality by examining the activities of theatre makers and institutions, such as visits, tours, and drama translations. Although Estonia and Finland are geographically and linguistically close, their societies, theatre systems, and cultural influences have diverged. This situation has produced links, clashes, and cooperation characterized by a mixture of familiarity and strangeness. The transnational links have in many ways also raised questions of national identity.
Finland and Estonia are still countries with active theatre scenes whose cooperation continues to find new forms.
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The Writer’s Poetics. Poetics as an Approach to an Author’s Body of Work is an introduction to the writer’s poetics as a distinctive research orientation, as well as a collection of case studies focusing on authors working in different eras and languages. While the 20th Century traditions of poetics have produced studies on the textual styles and techniques that characterize the writing of particular authors, the research orientation has not been explicitly defined and sufficiently theorized. The Writer’s Poetics frames the research orientation theoretically, and the 14 case studies making up the chapters demonstrate the diversity of viewpoints available within it. The contributors study authors ranging from 19th Century Finnish-Swedish female writers to 20th Century African-American novelists to postmodernist and contemporary authors of prose and lyric – and to the most successful Finnish rap artists of the 2010’s.
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Finnish-Russian Literary Relations 1800-1930
Current volume examines Finnish-Russian literary contacts that have not been thoroughly studied previously – the translation and reception history of Russian literature in Finland, and Finnish literature in Russia from 1800 until 1930. Personal contacts have influenced the decisions of what to translate and by whom more than the evident European context of Russian literature. In Finland, the relationship with Russia and attitudes to its literature have always been a political issue. Hostile relations have meant a remarkable decrease in translations, but maintained active discussion of Russian culture. During more friendly times, the inquisitive interest has increased and led to more intensive translation activities. However, since the early days of Finnish literature, only few intellectuals have known Russian well enough to translate literature into Swedish or Finnish. Consequently, translating has been highly dependent on individual mediators, often with a transnational identity.
Book DetailsGenetic criticism investigates creative processes by analysing manuscripts and other archival sources. It sheds light on authors’ working practices and the ways works are developed on the writer’s desk or in the artist’s studio.
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From National to Transnational. Culture, Tradition, and Literature
Tradition and literature are not held back by borders. Transnationality is, for example, geographic, symbolic, or linguistic movement and action. Different kinds of cultural transitions and migrant traditions are connected with transnationality. Studying the multilingualism of literary texts or diverse cultural identities, transnationality is a prolific angle. In the 102nd Yearbook of the Kalevala Society Foundation, the topics cover for example migration and return migration, material things crossing borders, and places of music culture. At a more theoretical level we are asking how studying transnationality enriches the disciplines with roots in the national sciences.
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This study offers a new perspective on unusual and unsettling experiences that are often interpreted as “mental illnesses” and on the techniques through which literary representations invite readerly responses and engagement. The book examines how four Finnish modernist writers, Helvi Hämäläinen, Jorma Korpela, Timo K. Mukka, and Maria Vaara, construct experiences of shattering and distress as bodily experiences that are embedded in the social and material world and entangled with social and cultural norms that govern subjectivity, gender, and sexuality. Drawing on narrative theory, theories of embodied cognition, phenomenology of illness, and feminist theory, the analyses show how literary works can invite readers to respond emotionally and to reflect on our views of the human mind and its interaction with the world. The book sheds light on the fictional portrayals and techniques of representation and on the ethics of narrating and reading about painful experiences. It also illuminates the ways the mind, body, consciousness, and mental distress are discussed in Finnish modernist literature and situates the texts in the international modernist tradition.
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Live, Experience, Understand. The Life of Alex Matson
Alex Matson (1888–1972) is an important Finnish literary critic and essayist, whose literary reviews and collections of essays have made a vital contribution to the development of Finland's postwar literary generation. Born in Finland as the son of a sailor, Matson moved as a young child with his family to Hull in England, where he went to school. In the 1910s, he moved back to Finland, where he at first established himself as painter associated with the expressionist November Group, an important Finnish artistic movement at the time. In the interbellum, he moved from fine arts to literature. In the 1920s and 1930s, he published several novels, but more important was his work as transmitter of international literary ideas to Finland. Together with his first wife, Kersti Bergroth, he edited the literary journal Sininen kirja ("The Blue Book"; 1927–1930), which was inspired by the writings of John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield. Sininen kirja is the most international literary journal in Finnish history to date and introduced Finland to the most significant modernist writers of the first half of the 20th century (Gottfried Benn, Jean Cocteau, Alfred Döblin, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Paul Valéry, Virginia Woolf).
During the Second World War, Matson worked for the State Communications Agency, which was responsible for disseminating relevant information about Finland to other nations and for informing Finns of relevant developments abroad. It was also tasked with studying the prevailing mood among the population in Finland. In Matson's unpublished wartime diaries, one can see the first symptoms of a shift in Finnish culture away from Germany and towards Anglo-Saxon culture.
From the 1940s onwards, Matson recommended new English and American novels as a part of his work as reader for Finnish publishing houses, and he also translated works by Joyce, Hemingway and Steinbeck. With the help of a network of international literary critics, Matson became acquainted with New Criticism, which he introduced to Finland before it became established among academic researchers. He was often critical of academic literary studies, but his seminal essay works Romaanitaide ("On the Prose Novel"; 1947), John Steinbeck (1948), Kaksi mestaria ("Two Masters", on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky; 1950) as well as his impressive conversational skills were instrumental in introducing knowledge about the principles of the prose novel to several authors (including Väinö Linna, Lauri Viita, and Hannu Salama), and contributed to their views of literature. Matson emphasized the importance of reading and understanding high-quality literature for the wellbeing of society.
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