Regional Literature

Heimat- und Identitätslosigkeit – diese Themen beschäftigen Schriftsteller, die ihr Geburtsland verlassen haben, seit jeher. Manche Autoren nehmen eine passive, resignierte Haltung gegenüber der Unmöglichkeit eines Ankommens im neuen Land ein, andere beharren auf der Illusion einer Heimatfindung.
Das Motiv der Identität(slosigkeit) spielt auch in den Werken des aus Siebenbürgen stammenden Schriftstellers Franz Hodjak eine zentrale Rolle. In seinen Gedichten und Romanen behandelt er das Thema des Sich-fremd-Fühlens und der Identitätssuche, das Gefühl, nirgendwo zu Hause zu sein, mal mit heiterer Gelassenheit, mal mit resignierter Desillusionierung und behauptet: „In der Heimatlosigkeit besteht meine Identität.“ Es ist nicht das traurig-resignierte Gefühl des Ausreisenden, das in den Werken von Franz Hodjak anzutreffen ist, sondern eher der Ausreißende spricht den Leser an.
Die vorliegende Untersuchung zeigt anhand verschiedener literaturwissenschaftlicher und soziopsychologischer Theorien Aspekte der Identität und Identitätsgestaltung in der Gattungs- und Formenwahl der Werke Franz Hodjaks auf.

In our times, David Malouf in particular has transformed Brisbane into a city of the imagination as well as of bricks and mortar, or tongue and groove. This paper presents some earlier – and largely forgotten – evocations of Brisbane, beginning with Ludwig Leichhardt in 1844.

Brisbane Writers' Festival 2004 World War I represents something of a watershed in the participation of Brisbane women in literary life. There was a rapid increase in literary publications by women during and immediately after the war, and this was accompanied by an expansion of the range of subject matter tackled by women, and a diversification of genres. Perhaps the most striking phenomenon of the inter-war period is that the more professional of Brisbane's women writers shifted their output from poetry and short stories to novels. A case in point is Mabel Forrest, a well-known prewar poet, who wrote several highly successful novels during the inter-war period, including The Wild Moth (1924) which was made into the film The Moth of Moonbi by Charles Chauvel in 1926. Another example is Zora Cross, a successful local poet who moved to Sydney in the latter part of World War I, and began to publish novels such as Sisters of the Seven Mile [1924] and The Lute Girl of Rainyvale [1925]. Brisbane's teenage poet, Ernestine Hemmings, also moved to Sydney after the war and became the journalist and non-fiction author Ernestine Hill. 1 These two kinds of shifts – from poetry to prose and from Brisbane to Sydney – which were made by women who made a living from writing meant that Brisbane's inter-war women poets tended to be amateur or semi-professional, deriving the bulk of their income from sources other than publications. While this tendency produced a rather genteel and conservative milieu, without much of an experimental edge, we shouldn't underestimate the contribution of these women. If there is one element that characterises the poetry of Brisbane women during and immediately after World War I, it is a retreat from the 'bush poetry' of the earlier period, and the emergence of a more cosmopolitan aesthetic encompassing a broader range of themes: war and empire, motherhood and womanliness, religion and morality, the sex question and race. Women poets of this period seem to have consciously taken on the role of public poets, helping to negotiate Brisbane's transition from a frontier town to a modern, cosmopolitan city in which women had a voice. The prolific and popular Emily Coungeau perhaps best exemplifies the new, self-consciously 'cosmopolitan' type of woman writer who came to prominence in Brisbane during World War I. Coungeau was born in Essex in about 1860. As a teenager, she became a ladies' companion, travelling extensively in the Mediterranean and becoming fluent in five languages. She migrated to Australia in 1887 at the age of 17, and in 1889 married Naoum Coungeau, an Albanian restaurant keeper whom she had met on the island of Lesbos. 2 The couple moved to Brisbane, and from 1889 until 1919 they operated a wine saloon in Petrie Bight, almost opposite the Customs House. Here the Coungeaus served light wines, a continental style luncheon with fruit and confectionery, and a renowned café au lait made to Emily's special recipe. 3 The journalist Bernice May later recalled the saloon in 1916 as 'a picturesque place which was crowded with soldiers,

The Shadow Theatre or Shadow Puppetry or ‘Chhaya Natak’ of India is an ancient yet powerful example of folk theatre. On the basis of available evidences it has been found to be a predecessor of human theatre. This ancient form of leather puppetry in India is surviving through ages but it is sad to note that today in the age of film, television and internet, it is merely alive in few regions in India. Since these ‘Shadow Theatres’ signify our Indian culture, it becomes our duty to preserve and promote such art forms for generations to come. Against this background, the present paper aims to highlight the significance of shadow theatres in modern India with special reference to ‘Ravana Chhaya’ of Orissa.

The article "Vineta, Sedina, Griffin: A choice of literary examples of pomeranian myths around 1900" tackles the topic of regional myths at the turn of the 20th century in the Pomera-nian region as found – or not – in literary works written at the time in that region. The author analyz-es three examples of myths: two of them are traditional elements of the  Pomeranian cultural heritage, as shaped around 1900; the third is a failed attempt to create a local (Szczecin) myth at the turn of the 20th century and the following years. The analyzed texts were published in books and elsewhere (e. g. on postcards) or could be found as anonymous pieces, saved in handwritten copies.

The article “Between »Femme Fragile« and »Femme Fatale«. The feminine Element as Future Indicator for the Pomeranian Society around 1900 in Hans Hoffmanns Stories From Farther Pomerania [Geschichten aus Hinterpommern]” tackles the topic of the social image of women at the turn of the 20th century in the Pomeranian region as found in literary works written by Hans Hoffmann at the time. By analyzing three of four novellas enclosed in Stories From Farther Pomerania, the author of the article states that the feminine element is a potential social power for future history of the region as the book's author seemed to believe. In the article, features of this element, personalized by female literary figures, are described and analyzed in the context of the stories and the social situation of that era.

北魏《真人代歌》内容并不限于鲜卑拓跋一部，甚至不局限于鲜卑一族，而兼有当时其他北方游牧民族事迹。其中《企喻》一章系鲜卑语，历来无题解，根据蒙古语可考知其为“军歌”“战歌”“武歌”之义。联类考察，可知梁横吹曲《慕容家自鲁企由谷》亦杂汉文、鲜卑语成题，涉及慕容鲜卑起源地问题。《真人代歌》中尚保存有与佛教信仰密切相关的作品，其宗教色彩不可忽视。此外，《旧唐书》《新唐书》对《真人代歌》记载的分歧与错舛，有助于确定《真人代歌》湮没的下限年代，亦可资管窥《新唐书》的史料来源与编撰情况，并供《新唐书》重新标点整理工作参考。

The earliest record about the Songs of Dai of Zhenren collection (approx. 100 pieces) is included into the Book of Northern Wei. Even though these song were used as state ritual and ceremonial songs of the Northern Wei court, the problem is, that all of them are lost by now. In the present paper I discuss 1) nature of the songs according to their titles, reconstructed materials from the dynastic histories, Tongdian encyclopedia, etc; 2) historical and religious characteristics of the songs; 3) the time of its oblivion.
The content of Songs of Dai of Zhenren 真人代歌 is not limited to the information concerning the Xianbei-Tabgach 鲜卑-拓跋 tribe, even not limited concerning to the Xianbei clan itself, but also contains the narrative about the deeds of other northern nomads of that time. Among them, the Songs of Qi Yu企喻歌 chapter's title is actually given in the xianbei language written in Chinese characters, meaning of which had not been decoded so far. Analyzing linguistic comparisons with the Mongolian language, I argue that its meaning should be understood and explained as "military song"/"combat song" or "song of war".
Several pieces included into the Songs of Dai of Zhenren collection also were believed to be closely related to Taoism, but through the comprehensive analysis I am showing that it is connected to the Buddhist belief and this religious background should not be ignored.
In addition, the differences and mistakes in the records between the Old Book of Tang旧唐书 and the New Book of Tang新唐书 on the Songs of Dai of Zhenren are important in helping to determine the latest timeline of the Songs of Dai of Zhenren annihilation, and could also be used to provide evidences on the historical sources and the compilation process of the New Book of Tang, as well as references for the job of the New Book of Tang's reduction.

The status of Cebuano literature in the Philippine literary field has been relegated to a marginalized position due to the outbreak of the Second World War and the implementation of English and Filipino as "Mediums of Instruction. " As a consequence, the development of Cebuano literature was thwarted. However, prominent Cebuano scholars exerted valuable effort to overcome the marginalized status of Cebuano literature through translation. Through translation, Cebuano literature started to be recognized in the Philippine literary field as translation projects of Cebuano literature were published and canonized. This study looks at the politics of translation and how it influences the production and canon formation of translated Cebuano literature. In doing so, this study traces the historical events from the 1970s to the 2010s to situate the narrative of the production process of Cebuano literature translation projects. Using the postcolonial translation theory of Andre Lefevere, this study identifies the constituencies that control the production process and investigates the agenda behind the production of Cebuano literature translation projects. Lastly, this study utilizes John Guillory's theory of the canon, Barbara Herrnstein Smith's contentions of "value/evaluation, " and Lawrence Venuti's translation and canonization theory to elaborate how translation has influenced the formation of an alternative canon of Cebuano literature. Finally, this study draws its overall analysis on the material examination of Cebuano literature translation projects and on interviews with the constituencies (translators and publishers) to present the political issues in the production and canon formation of translated Cebuano literature.

The present paper seeks to study the relevance of ‘ Neem Sahitya’- a genre of Bengali literature that sprang up in the industrial belt of Asansol-Durgapur in the 1970s. This literary endeavour was short-lived and critically underrated. Therefore, quite naturally the entire bulk of Neem literature has been thrust into oblivion now.
Yet the question remains that was Neem Sahitya so unimportant actually. My study reveals that it deserved much more acclaim than it has actually received. In this paper, therefore, efforts shall be made to enumerate and evaluate the importance of Neem Sahitya. However, not discussing much about its literary qualities (about which an entire dissertation has been written) the paper will stick to its purpose of exploring the social functions that this genre has tried to perform

Nagaland is a vibrant hill state located at the fag end of North Eastern region of India. Surrounded by Myanmar, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Manipur from various sides, Nagaland is world famous for its rare tribal ethnicity, natural opulence and cultural grandeur. The state remained less explored for a very long time and perhaps due to this reason we do not have much written account of its history. Though few authors have attempted to inscribe Naga history quite prolifically in recent decades but the cultural exuberance of Nagaland is such that still a lot is left to be known. It is unfortunate, however, that the serenity and tranquility not only of Nagaland but of entire North East region of India is being disrupted by the antisocial elements, political radicals, military forces, and lopsided policies of the government. Forced disappearance, military atrocities, rape, seduction, and violence in many other forms have not only stolen the peace and security of its people but also stirred their hearts in such a way that they tend to lament over the state and fate of their land-Nagaland. Easterine Kire Iralu, a poet and novelist of Nagaland is well known for her Naga consciousness. Through her writings, Iralu does the same thing for Nagaland which Irom Sharmila does for Manipur through her social and political activities. Her first volume of poetry Kelhoukevira (1982) confirms Iralu as one of the leading poets of Nagaland. Love for Nagaland, its land, people and culture tend to be the perennial themes of her poems. But, what attracts our prime attention in her poetry is the note of melancholy at the loss of real 'Nagaland' and a heart-searing lament over the dead soldiers of Indo-Naga conflict. Hence, a longing for Naga liberation, its political autonomy, ethnic solidarity and peace has been found to be ceaselessly irrigating the words of her verses. The present article seeks to identify this Naga consciousness in the poetry of Easterine Kire Iralu by highlighting the significance of freedom for a state torn between cultural mutation and political factions. It also endeavours to discuss the poet's experiences of having born as a Naga in India.

India's independence from British rule did not bring news of adulterated happiness for the entire native population. The partition of India that followed it brought extreme difficulty for many. Division into two nations on the basis of religion meant migration of a huge number of people from India to Pakisthan (both East and West) and vice versa. The exodus was long and it continued till the late 50s. Needless to say it was heart-wrenching too, because it meant a lot of inhuman hardship for the migratory population. It included not only life and wealth loss that were immediately visible, but also intangible destruction of identity and self. One of the most prominent crises that these people faced was the loss of 'home'. However, it will be entirely naïve to consider this aforementioned home to be an architectural specimen of some economic value. It is certainly so, but more than that it has an emotional value too-connecting a man with his roots, conferring on him his much desired identity. Homelessness therefore means rootlessness and a lack of identity. The issue of homelessness has been a favourite with many postcolonial writers. For the purpose of this paper I have chosen the eminent Bengali novelist Shaktipada Rajguru's Dandak Theke Marichjhanpi (From Dandak to Marichjhanpi). The novel which deals with the theme of

Hans Hoffmann (*1848 in Stettin – †1909 in Weimar) was considered in his day one of the most important German-speaking writers of his time. Above all, his novellas were highly esteemed, being pointed to direct analogies with works by Storm, Keller, or Raabe.
The book shifts Hoffmann and his work, nearly forgotten over the 20th century, into the focus of attention. This occurs on many grounds: to begin with, it is the very first book on Hoffmann since his death. Secondly, his Pomerania-referred historical novellas are examined from a completely new point of view: for the very first time compiled as a coherent text corpus, they are interpreted from present day perspectives within the context of the depiction of an artistic space. Narratological questions are given priority in this concise text analysis.
Bartosz Wójcik undertakes a project aiming to deliver the very first input to picture the panorama of literary representation of Pomerania at the turn of the 20th century and to offer a research model for this purpose. He adopts positions of Jurij M. Lotman and his theory of cultural semiotic space. Using newest achievements of e.g. narratology and culture science to research the category of space Wójcik analyzes the literary representation of Pomerania and uses Hoffmann's historical novellas as reference. The study is based on a broad basis of scientifically processed material in historical, cultural and literary context.
This approach is a prospective research program, appealing to those interested in the literary culture of Pomerania as well as fellow researchers of regionally referred literatures who seek optimum models and research methods.

The Indian short story is not merely a derivative of the Western genre, but owes much to the great story-telling tradition of Indian antiquity. The mythical and legendary tales as well as folktales have provided a fertile soil for the modern Indian short story to germinate. Beginning towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Indian short story flourished in the twentieth century. It became evident by the end of the past century that the canon is attuned to Indian landscape whose heterogeneous people and their diverse experiences it reflects so faithfully. The Indian short story as a distinct genre resembles a “multicoloured glass” scattering myriad hues which is analogous to the diversity of our country itself. The variegated and unbeaten genre righteously deserves critical attention which it has been deprived of.

With twenty-seven scholarly articles by academics, professors and researchers, the present critical volume is a tribute to an affluent but neglected genre of Indian literature. In accord with the genre itself, the scope of the book allows for such diversity as the classic writers like Tagore and Manto; the feminist writers like Ismat Chughtai, Kamala Das, Shashi Deshpande and Indira Goswami; the dalit writers like Bama and Ajay Navaria; the diaspora writers like Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri. The reworking of myth by Mahasweta Devi, the nature lore of Ruskin Bond, the saga of exile by the Kashmiri Pandits, the satire of Hari Shankar Parsai, the macabre tales of Satyajit Ray, the problematics of identity in Manoj Das and memory in Temsula Ao—all are taken into consideration within the structure of a single volume to make this a stimulating overview for students and scholars of Indian literature.

„Klingsor“ gehört aufgrund ihrer leitenden Rolle zu den vielfach untersuchten Periodika, sodass der Beitrag statt einer allgemeinen Präsentation, auf einen in der Fachliteratur implizierten, aber nicht erarbeiteten Aspekt eingegangen wird: In einem ersten Schritt steht die Beziehungen von Klingsor und seinem Herausgeber zu maßgebenden Akteuren aus dem akademischen Leben in Rumänien während der ersten Phase der Ideologisierung (bis 1933) im Fokus. Punktuell wird dabei auch die Mitarbeit des Lehrpersonals an Gymnasien einzubeziehen. Der zweite, kürzere Abschnitt fragt nach Kontakten des Herausgebers zu Akademikern aus dem deutschen Sprachraum, die sich aktiv für die Verbreitung der nationalsozialistischen Ideologie engagierten und als prominente Figuren galten. Auf diese Weise entsteht ein erster Überblick des akademischen Netzwerks der Zeitschrift Klingsor in der Zeit vor 1933, der zugleich den Wirkungsradius und die akademische Einbettung der Zeitschrift aufzeigt.

Ausgehend von den Raumkonzepten von Kulturtheoretikern wie Michel Foucault, Marc Augé u. a. wird der Roman Warum das Kind in der Polenta kocht von Aglaja Veteranyi als „raumorientierter Roman“ interpretiert, in dem der Zirkus als heterotoper Ort betrachtet werden kann, als ein Ort, der sich zwar in der realen Welt manifestiert und lokalisierbar ist, sich aber durch ihre Funktion als Gegenraum von anderen „realen” Orten als „Ort außerhalb aller Orte” abgrenzt und unterscheidet. Er fungiert im Werk Veteranyis als eine Randzone, als konstruierte (Gegen-)Realität unserer Zivilisation, als Grenzort zwischen Illusion und Wirklichkeit, Heimat und Fremde.

Caste-based discrimination is a grotesque socio-political reality in India. The term " Dalit " (or " untouchable ") refers to a person belonging to the lowest caste in the traditional Indian caste system. Inspired by B. R. Ambedkar, a Western-educated intellectual and the chief architect of the Indian constitution, Dalit writers have produced stories of resistance, stories of caste discrimination and social ostracization, and alternative and parallel visions of casteless societies. As an author of contemporary Dalit writings, Meena Kandasamy describes a broad spectrum of Dalit experiences, and she voices concerns that are often unar-ticulated in the mainstream Indian literary canon. In so doing, Kandasamy not only helps to interpret the reality confronting Dalits but also reclaims their lost voices and identity. In conversation , Kandasamy speaks very much the way she writes—with bluntness and warmth.

Caste-based discrimination is a grotesque socio-political reality in India. The term " Dalit " (or " untouchable ") refers to a person belonging to the lowest caste in the traditional Indian caste system. Inspired by B. R. Ambedkar, a Western-educated intellectual and the chief architect of the Indian constitution, Dalit writers have produced stories of resistance, stories of caste discrimination and social ostracization, and alternative and parallel visions of casteless societies. As an author of contemporary Dalit writings, Meena Kandasamy describes a broad spectrum of Dalit experiences, and she voices concerns that are often unar-ticulated in the mainstream Indian literary canon. In so doing, Kandasamy not only helps to interpret the reality confronting Dalits but also reclaims their lost voices and identity. In conversation , Kandasamy speaks very much the way she writes—with bluntness and warmth.

Chapter 1 in Benjamin Kohlmann and Matthew Taunton's CUP volume of essays on, among many other things, the "Long 1930s."

This chapter recovers English regional writers as part of the history of 1930s literature, arguing that they influenced the national imaginary and thus influenced national identity in distinct and measurable ways that perhaps only became clear in the context of World War II. At the center of its inquiry about these writers and 1930s writings are the questions: Who are the writers that make questions about regionalism and ruralism urgent for their admiring (or not so admiring) contemporaries? How do their works relate region to nation, provincial place to publishing center, rural representation to urban readers? And how does a more nuanced understanding of such relations change our construction of the history of 1930s literature? "Beyond Englishness" begins to answer these questions, directing scholarly attention to an almost entirely ignored set of writers whose verbal and visual images, literary styles, and strategies of relating regional to national identity define what could be called the new ruralism of the 1930s: Francis Brett Young who wrote about the West Midlands and Welsh Borderlands in the Mercian novels, including House under the Water (1932); Adrian Bell, who wrote about farming in Suffolk in the trilogy made up of Corduroy (1930), Silver Ley (1913), and The Cherry Tree (1932); A.G. Street who wrote about rural life in Wiltshire in Farmer’s Glory and Strawberry Roan (both 1932); and Flora Thompson who wrote about village life in Oxfordshire in the Candleford trilogy (1939-1943).

The review considers the two-volume collective monograph A History of Urals Literature. The Nineteenth Century, edited by Professor E. K. Sozina and published in 2020. This work aims to present a regional literary history that transcends the boundaries of a single national tradition and seeks to reconstruct the complex multicultural phenomenon of literary life in the nineteenth-century Urals. The volume’s chapters are dedicated to the life and works of authors who lived in the region or visited it, the ways the Urals has been represented in travel writings, the literary traditions of the Bashkirs, the Komi, and the Udmurts, and the institutional infrastructure of Urals literary life (theatres, libraries, publishing businesses, periodicals, and literary societies). The reviewer seeks to determine the main trends in the literary developments behind the multitude of facts gathered by the authors and to articulate these trends in terms of relevant theoretical approaches. A series of biographies spanning the whole century makes it possible to detect the gradual autonomization of the literary field (Pierre Bourdieu). Travelogues and representations of the imaginary geography of the Urals appear to have been connected to the colonization and symbolic appropriation of this region by the Russian Empire. The development of literary institutions is regarded as a part of the history of the Russian public sphere (Jürgen Habermas). The complex interactions between the literary traditions of colonized peoples and Russian colonizers are seen through the postcolonial concept of hybridity (Homi Bhabha). Despite certain drawbacks, the work under review makes it possible to see literary life of the nineteenth-century Russian Empire as a multinational, multiconfessional, and multilingual network of actors and texts beyond the boundaries of the Russian national canon.

The paper analyses six folk tales on the legendary pirate Klaus Störtebeker. The topic, known from the middle ages, was written down in the 19th century. Five of the works of reference come from the turn of the 20 th century, as the Klaus Störtebeker story reached the peak of its popularity. The sixth comes from the first voluminous anthology of the Pomeranian folk tales. Klaus Störtebeker is connected with Hamburg and the North Sea at mouth of the Elbe River the most often. However, in different versions of its tale there are many elements with reference to Western Pomerania that can be found. As they are shaped differently, the paper compares and analyses them.

The article problematizes the use of the term “minority” literature in the literary context, proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. According to the author of the paper, their definition proves to be too narrow and applicable only to a part of this literature and not to its entire corpus. The aim of the article is therefore to provide a new definition of “minority literature” by taking into account literature written by Slovenes living in Italy and literature written by Italians living in Slovenia and Croatia. As for the typological elements characteristic of literature written on the both sides of the Slovenian-Italian border, the article points out that the two literary systems are marked by the ontological dimension, interculturalism as an ethic value, pronounced national, linguistic and spatial elements, and historical memory. The article even goes a step forward and poses the question whether “minority literature” could be regarded as a completely independent supranational literary system.

The book by Roswitha Wisniewski, published in German in 2013, offers the very first thoroughly edited and relatively lengthy review of the development of literature in Pomerania from its beginnings until today. The study shall most probably be regarded as core literature for an extended period of time. As stated in the title, it is a history of only the German-language literature of the region. The few notes on aspects that leave a little to be desired do not change the comprehensive importance of the book.

What have Cesare Pavese, Beppe Fenoglio and Primo Levi got in common? Apart from their obvious Piedmontese origins, they and other writers coming from the same Italian region share a certain tendency towards multilingualism, which is a characteristic that has not been comprehensively investigated over the years.  This study aims at carrying out a linguistic analysis of a group of modern and contemporary narratives written by Piedmontese authors. The novels and short stories here examined stand out for the intriguing way in which they move between a variety of idioms – Standard Italian, regional vernaculars, English and pastiches (with rare excursions into French). With the support of linguistic and philosophical theories on the relation between identity, alterity and language, the author demonstrates how the use of non-standard parlances is fundamental in both reinforcing the sense of belonging to specific social groups and highlighting the presence of dissimilar identities and ‘other’ cultures. A sociolinguistic study and an analysis of the political and historical context of the region are also provided in order to illustrate how the combination of different varieties in literature reflects the region’s peripheral position, as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in Piedmont in the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. With this book the author attempts to fill a gap and cast new light on Piedmontese literature. Although some important critical studies on the use of dialect or English exist on individual Piedmontese authors, and some contributions to the history of regional literature exist, too, no current, systematic study that compares different Piedmontese writers under the language/identity theme has been published.

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. (Eliot, 1968) All moments of decolonisation in former colonies were engineered to assert a native and indigenous imaginary to rediscursify the colonial epistemology of cultural subjugation. Postcolonial ontologies are therefore journeys and quests in rerouting/re-rooting the fall outs of epistemic violence unleashed by the hegemon of colonial cognitivities. As a postcolonial nation India did the same by assigning upon itself the decolonial task of forging institutions and ideologies that can constitute a distinct national identity of univalence and a unitary logic of a imagined community that shares a common past of colonial exploitation. This historic negotiation between two temporal orders, one belonging to a colonial past and the other

The paper "Cultural Changes in Western Pomerania in the Light of Folk Tales (Contributions from 1840-1848 and 1948)" deals with the cultural changes that occurred in Western Pomerania during the 19th and 20th century and resulted from the unification process of Germany and the political transformations after World War II. The analysis is based od three works of reference: two anthologies of Pomeranian folk tales - by Jodocus Donatus Hubertus Temme from 1840 and by Adalbert Kuhn and Wilhelm Schwartz from 1848 - and Tymoteusz Karpowicz's literary debut "Pomeranian legends", published in the Polish Szczecin in 1948 - proof of great vitality od folk tales and legends, regardless of the socio-political situation or nationality.

IN: Spiegelungen.  Zeitschrift für deutsche Kultur und Geschichte Südosteuropas. Heft 2/2015, Jg. 10 (64). Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet. 47-60.


Die politisch-gesellschaftliche Wende in Rumänien brachte auch einen Umbruch im literarischen Produktionsfeld mit sich und hatte als direkte Konsequenz die Verände-rung bzw. die Neuinterpretation der Themen und Motive in der deutschsprachigen Dichtung der Region. Einerseits bewahrten die Autoren die Themen-und Motivkrei-se, die die deutsche Lyrik in Rumänien seit jeher geprägt hatten, andererseits kamen neue Erfahrungen der veränderten Lebensverhältnisse hinzu, die eine Neudeutung der Themen und Motive nötig machten: die Aufhebung der Zensur, das Problem der Aus-wanderung und die damit verbundene allmähliche Auflösung des deutschsprachigen Literaturbetriebs. In meinem Beitrag wird der Fokus vor allem auf die Motive Heimat und (sieben-bürgische) Landschaft gerichtet. Die Destruktion des Mythos Heimat (der Umgang mit dem Verlust der alten und dem Nicht-gewinnen-Können einer neuen Heimat) sowie das Thema des Umgangs mit der Vergangenheit werden durch Gedicht analysen und Interpretationen beleuchtet, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf das Landschaftsgedicht gelegt wird.

Исследование посвящено образам, сюжетам и мотивам традиционной русской и коми-пермяцкой культуры, которые отразились в прозе о деревне. В их числе - сюжет кладоискательства, вещего сна, прихода нечистого  к  жене под видом мужа , образы героя-праведника и героя-охотника, мифологической чуди и др. Творчество  В. Распутина рассматривается в контексте восточносибирской фольклорной традиции, повести В. Личутина - в сопоставлении с северорусским материалом, произведения о коми-пермяцкой деревне - в сравнении с полевыми записями из Коми-Пермяцкого округа.

This article explores the poetry of François Jaffrennou, who published under the druidic pseudonym Taldir ab Hernin, as a case study in decolonized multilingualism. Close readings of Taldir’s writing in Breton, Welsh and French reveal the pressures of negotiating a hybrid Celtic-French identity, as he affirms his Celticity while maintaining a careful relationship with France. Taldir criticizes the French state in his Welsh texts, whereas in French and Breton his critique is more guarded, subtly codified. The Celtic space which emerges here is full of tensions, as Taldir works both within and against the impulse to reconcile Celtic and French identities. I argue that being provincially Other in France requires a delicate balancing act, a special way of being French. I also contend that to work on the local is to work on the global, looking beyond regionalist and postcolonial approaches to Breton writing in an effort to dismantle the monolingualizing tendencies of French Studies.

The article "Between Translation, Borrowing, Reinterpretation and Rewriting: Polish and Polish-Speaking Pomeranian Folk Tales" tackles the question of folk tales in the Polish part of Pomerania. Existing since 1945, some of them are translations of the German originals, as the cultural heritage of the region has German-speaking roots. Other texts reinterpret German sources, while several tales are new works.

Shadow Theatre is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment which uses flat articulate figures to create the impression of moving humans. Shadows might seem transitory and temporary in nature but they can be a powerful mode of artistic and theatrical representation too if utilized artistically. Technologically, in Shadow Theatre the articulated figures are illuminated from behind the screen to create an illusion of moving characters. And then this illusion is adjusted skillfully to depict various stories from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, and the folktales. In this way, they not only enhance our understanding of the Indian cultural tradition but also cast a profound social appeal on the viewers. As Stanley Hochman also considers when says that 'it is more than just a performance; it is a social and religious event, eliciting the atmosphere of a community ritual' (1984). Here, in this paper, an attempt has been made to study the relevance of such ancient theatres in contemporary India by focusing on the Oriya Shadow Theatre Ravana Chhaya. It also purports to understand how the micronarratives of folk theatres can potently compete with the metanarratives of film, media and mainstream theatre.

The present excursus attempts a deconstructive reading of the foundational texts of normative Indian nationalism and problematises them and their epistemic plexus through the critical trajectories of Homi K. Bhabha and Partha Chatterjee. Nationalism still remains a primary signifier in academic debates and in works like The Nation and its Fragments and Nationalist Thoughts and the Colonial World, Chatterjee challenges the assumption that nationalism in Asia and Africa is a derivative version of pre-given European nationalist a prioris. For Chatterjee, Asian and African nationalism was based on difference and not on derivation and the present essay addresses this differentiality, this dynamics of performative operativity of Indian nationalism with specific references to textual episteme of foundational thinkers such as Tagore, Gandhi, Vivekananda and Jawaharlal Nehru. We interrogate the normative cognitivities of these foundational thinkers by pitting them against the radical conceptualisation of DissemiNation of Homi K. Bhabha. We argue that while the foundational texts of Indian nationalism did not imitate the epistemic structures of the West they ended up in offering only mythic abstractions and religious normativities that surely fail to betray any proud deliberative encounter with " the historic and objective realities " of India. The last sun of the century sets amidst the blood-red clouds of the West and the whirlwind of hatred. The naked passion of self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and the howling verses of vengeance.

Pomerania’s identities. On Hans Hoffmann's "Der Teufel vom Sande"

"Der Teufel vom Sande" was published in 1891 in a collection of short stories which tackled the history and the common image of Pomerania. The text, classified as historical fiction, was popular at the time of its publishing. Apart from its role as a piece of entertainment-a love story plays a relatively important part in the narrative-the short story divagates about the cultural heritage and the identity of Pomerania's inhabitants around 1900. Basing on stereotypes - and using them for humorous purposes - Hoffmann proposed a vision of Pomerania that was of vital significance at the time of the German Reich's foundation. Nowadays it can only be historically reconstructed.

Der 1891 von Hans Hoffmann veröffentlichte Text "Der Teufel vom Sande" erschien in einer Novellensammlung, die sich mit der Geschichte und dem geläufigen Bild Pommerns auseinandersetzte. Der damals populäre Text schildert eine fiktive Geschichte vor historischem Hintergrund. Neben seiner Unterhaltungsfunktion - die Liebesgeschichte ist für den Plot relativ wichtig - spielt die literarische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Kulturerbe und der Identität der Pommern um 1900 eine gewichtige Rolle. Auf Stereotypen basierend - und diese humoristisch nutzend - bot Hoffmann eine Vision Pommerns an, die zum Zeitpunkt der Entstehung des Deutschen Reiches von Bedeutung war. Heute kann sie nur noch historisch rekonstruiert werden.

Writing Region: Robert Kroetsch and the Poetics of Prairie Space (John Thieme)

Abstract
This article considers the problematics of writing region with a particular focus on the formal strategies employed to represent Prairie space in four novels by the Canadian writer Robert Kroetsch. It locates Kroetsch’s work in relation to the fiction of his Western Canadian predecessors, Sinclair Ross and W.O. Mitchell, arguing that while they, too, are concerned with depicting the specifics of the Prairie environment, their approach is shackled by an adherence to the conventions of classic realism. It suggests that such conventions are best an inadequate vehicle for rendering the full gamut of Prairie experience and at worst an artificial set of rules, based on discourses of enclosure better suited to the more bounded worlds of European social situations. In contrast, Kroetsch’s work turns to whimsy, fantasy, ellipsis, discontinuity and incompletion in an endeavour to develop a poetics that will do justice to the complexities of the human relationship with Prairie “distance”. The article also considers the extent to which Kroetsch’s fiction replaces older Prairie gender codes with a new androgynous social model. It concludes by suggesting that his development of a range of non-realistic techniques to give voice to marginalized peoples and places offers a possible blueprint for writers around the globe who face the challenge of how to articulate the experience of unrepresented or under-represented regions.

Keywords
Regional writing, Prairie fiction, Spatial poetics, Robert Kroetsch, The Studhorse Man, Gone Indian, Badlands, What the Crow Said