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Central Europe

Richard Robinson Orcid Logo, Julian Preece Orcid Logo

Europe in British Literature and Culture, Pages: 53 - 69

Swansea University Authors: Richard Robinson Orcid Logo, Julian Preece Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1017/9781009425483.006

Abstract

This chapter answers the question ’does central Europe exist?’ by first drawing a literary-historical line between Franz Kafka and Milan Kundera, focusing particularly on the critical tensions in Kundera’s construction of a vanished culture and on the West’s mythologizing of central Europe. It then...

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Published in: Europe in British Literature and Culture
ISBN: 9781009425490 9781009425483
Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2024
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67858
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first_indexed 2024-09-30T11:38:33Z
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spelling v2 67858 2024-09-30 Central Europe dd0360f678f81621c96a94dae0e1c2b3 0000-0003-2097-1931 Richard Robinson Richard Robinson true false 6cf10f340b4335c30856d022675b34b2 0000-0002-8887-740X Julian Preece Julian Preece true false 2024-09-30 CACS This chapter answers the question ’does central Europe exist?’ by first drawing a literary-historical line between Franz Kafka and Milan Kundera, focusing particularly on the critical tensions in Kundera’s construction of a vanished culture and on the West’s mythologizing of central Europe. It then turns to two Prague-set novels, Bruce Chatwin’s Utz, which explores the condition of stubborn aesthetic individualism under communism, and Tom McCarthy’s Men in Space, set in the months following the splitting-up of Czechoslovakia in 1992. Beyond the Czech lands, the Austrian Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina, a significant work of avant-garde feminism, offers a doomed fantasy of post-war Austro-Hungarian relationships. Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, set in the Polish–Silesian borderlands, is a revenge thriller whose narrator is inspired by the radicalism of William Blake. These case studies signal the ways central Europe has been confabulated by British writers; they also show how an evolving canon of fiction-in-translation is appropriately pluralizing and updating the West’s idea of the ‘middle’. Book chapter Europe in British Literature and Culture 53 69 Cambridge University Press Cambridge 9781009425490 9781009425483 Central Europe; Austro-Hungarian Empire; Franz Kafka; Milan Kundera; Ingeborg Bachmann; Olga Tokarczuk; Bruce Chatwin; Tom McCarthy; communism; feminism 13 6 2024 2024-06-13 10.1017/9781009425483.006 COLLEGE NANME Culture and Communications School COLLEGE CODE CACS Swansea University Not Required 2024-10-31T10:18:30.5221893 2024-09-30T12:31:03.7993822 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - Modern Languages, Translation, and Interpreting Richard Robinson 0000-0003-2097-1931 1 Julian Preece 0000-0002-8887-740X 2
title Central Europe
spellingShingle Central Europe
Richard Robinson
Julian Preece
title_short Central Europe
title_full Central Europe
title_fullStr Central Europe
title_full_unstemmed Central Europe
title_sort Central Europe
author_id_str_mv dd0360f678f81621c96a94dae0e1c2b3
6cf10f340b4335c30856d022675b34b2
author_id_fullname_str_mv dd0360f678f81621c96a94dae0e1c2b3_***_Richard Robinson
6cf10f340b4335c30856d022675b34b2_***_Julian Preece
author Richard Robinson
Julian Preece
author2 Richard Robinson
Julian Preece
format Book chapter
container_title Europe in British Literature and Culture
container_start_page 53
publishDate 2024
institution Swansea University
isbn 9781009425490
9781009425483
doi_str_mv 10.1017/9781009425483.006
publisher Cambridge University Press
college_str Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchytype
hierarchy_top_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str School of Culture and Communication - Modern Languages, Translation, and Interpreting{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Culture and Communication - Modern Languages, Translation, and Interpreting
document_store_str 0
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description This chapter answers the question ’does central Europe exist?’ by first drawing a literary-historical line between Franz Kafka and Milan Kundera, focusing particularly on the critical tensions in Kundera’s construction of a vanished culture and on the West’s mythologizing of central Europe. It then turns to two Prague-set novels, Bruce Chatwin’s Utz, which explores the condition of stubborn aesthetic individualism under communism, and Tom McCarthy’s Men in Space, set in the months following the splitting-up of Czechoslovakia in 1992. Beyond the Czech lands, the Austrian Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina, a significant work of avant-garde feminism, offers a doomed fantasy of post-war Austro-Hungarian relationships. Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, set in the Polish–Silesian borderlands, is a revenge thriller whose narrator is inspired by the radicalism of William Blake. These case studies signal the ways central Europe has been confabulated by British writers; they also show how an evolving canon of fiction-in-translation is appropriately pluralizing and updating the West’s idea of the ‘middle’.
published_date 2024-06-13T10:18:29Z
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score 11.037056

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