Images of America in Scandinavia

Erscheinungsjahr 1998
ISBN: 978-90-420-0621-8
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 28, 232 Seiten, Format (B × H): 17 mm x 24 mm

Reihe: Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft

The subject of Images of America in Scandinavia, the first comprehensive study of its kind, is as multifaceted, complex, and overwhelming as America or the United States, itself. It concerns the nature and function, reality and fiction of such images in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden past and present. The book is intended to be a source of solid information as well as a starting point for further inquiries into its cultural territory.
Part of its focus is on images of America rooted in printed sources, but, in addition, general surveys of other cultural signs of America in the Scandinavian countries present a broader picture and provide some of the background for the predominantly literary images. Issues such as government and politics, popular and vanguard music and art, and socio-cultural institutions intermittently come to the fore.
Framing the volume's three pairs of national surveys is an introductory chapter, which addresses the entire subject from a bird's-eye view, and a concluding chapter, which, by contrast, delves into the cross-fire of sentiments defining people whose images of America, are both American and Scandinavian. The discussion of America as perceived in Scandinavia sheds new light on intriguing inter-Scandinavian cultural distinctions and borderlines.
Countless books and articles, methods and theories, have been devoted to the study of national and cultural identity. Still, the exchanges between such identities and the images they engender - so indispensable for the participants in a global culture - remain clouded by many misconceptions. Images of America in Scandinavia whose editors and authors all have Scandinavian backgrounds, will contribute an improved understanding of the cultural interplay between Scandinavia and the United States of America.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Houe, Poul

Rossel, Sven Hakon

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface. Sven H. ROSSEL: The Image of the United States in Danish Literature: A Survey with Scandinavian Perspectives. DENMARK. Claus SECHER: American Literature in Denmark. Steffen Elmer JØRGENSEN: Ideal or Counterimage? Aspects of the American Cultural Impact on Denmark 1776 to 1995. NORWAY. Hans H. SKEI: American Books and Writers in Translation, on the Book Market, and in Libraries. Øyvind T. GULLIKSEN: Tunnel of Love: American Influences on Norwegian Culture. SWEDEN. Rolf LUNDÉN: American Literature in Translation. Birgitta STEENE: The Swedish Image of America. Poul HOUE: The Image of America in Scandinavian(-)American Literature. Index of Personal Names.