Fantastic Literature - a Medium of Modernity: Svetoslav Minkov

Proglas ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolina Burneva ◽  
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◽  

The article introduces the reader to the context of the momentous transformations of the aesthetic and worldview paradigms at the end of ‘the long 19th century’ and the arrival of modernity in Bulgarian culture which had – until then – been traditional and folklore-based. In this context, the author traces the early work of Svetoslav Minkov – a distinguished author of fantastic literature and cofounder of Bulgarian diabolical literature. The article focuses on comparative reading of several short stories by Gustav Meyrink and Svetoslav Minkov in order to highlight the arguments supporting the discussion of this literary movement in a broad, European context.

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-56
Author(s):  
Christian Schmitt

Abstract The discrepancy between common temporary expectations of Switzerland as idyll on the one hand, and the reality of its industrially organized tourism on the other, imposes irritations upon the touristic gaze. This article, then, traces the origins of this discrepancy and examines the relationship between Swiss idyll and tourism in the 19th century. The analyses of Ida Hahn-Hahn’s Eine Idylle and Hans Christian Andersen’s Iisjomfruen showcase different ways of relating idyll and tourism to one another as well as the aesthetic merit produced by this constellation.


Imafronte ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jose Miguel Morales Folguera

Construidos por tres generaciones de los condes-duques de Benavente, entre 1499 y 1621, como instrumento de disfrute y de prestigio familiar de la villa ducal, los jardines de Benavente se convirtieron en uno de los jardines renacentistas más importantes de España. Desgraciadamente, los cambios en los gustos estéticos de los herederos, el paso de los ejércitos franceses de Napoleón y el abandono de una naturaleza necesitada de su continuo cuidado, hicieron que los jardines desaparecieran en los primeros años del siglo XIX. En este artículo nos proponemos hacer su reconstrucción ideal, con la utilización de los numerosos textos y de la documentación existente. Built for three generations of the count-dukes of Benavente, between 1499 and 1621, as an instrument of enjoyment and family prestige of the ducal town, the Benavente gardens became one of the most important Renaissance gardens in Spain. Unfortunately, the changes in the aesthetic tastes of the heirs, the destruction wrought by Napoleon's army and the abandonment of a nature in need of their continuous care, caused the gardens to disappear in the early years of the 19th century. In this article we propose to make its ideal reconstruction, with the use of the numerous texts and existing documentation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Margaret Ramsey

James Hall Nasmyth (1808–1890) was an accomplished engineer and amateur astronomer. The culmination of Nasmyth's drawings from telescopic observation, the advent of photomechanical print processes, and his interest in the causative features of the lunar surface, led to the 1874 publication of The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite. This thesis provides a comprehensive catalogue of the lunar illustrations in the first three editions, revealing the aesthetic variations in the illustrative plates due to reproduction and print processes used. These processes include: engraving, photogravure, heliotype, lithograph, chromolithograph, and four different variations of the Woodburytype. The editions are contextualized using scientific photographs as illustrations, through a discussion of astronomy, book production, and Nasmyth's biography. Through an examination of Nasmyth's use of photography and permanent print processes, this thesis argues that his lunar illustrations remain an important scientific contribution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 149-175
Author(s):  
Ewa Grzęda

Romantic wanderings of Poles across Saxon SwitzerlandThe history of Polish tourism in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains as well as the literary and artistic reception of the landscape and culture of Saxon Switzerland have never been discussed in detail. The present article is a research reconnaissance. The beginnings and development of tourism in the region came in the late 18th and early 19th century. The 1800s were marked by the emergence of the first German-language descriptions of Saxon Switzerland, which served as guidebooks at the time. From the very beginning Poles, too, participated in the tourist movement in the area. The author of the article seeks to follow the increasing interest in Saxon Switzerland and the appearance of the first descriptions of the region in Polish literature and culture. She provides a detailed analysis of Polish-language accounts of micro-trips to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains by Andrzej Edward Koźmian, Stanisław Deszert, Antoni Edward Odyniec, Klementyna Hoffman née Tańska and a poem by Maciej Bogusz Stęczyński. As the analysis demonstrates, in the first half of the 19th century Poles liked to visit these relatively low mountains in Central Europe and tourism in the region is clearly part of the history of Polish mountain tourism. Thanks to unique aesthetic and natural values of the mountains, full of varied rocky formations, reception of their landscape had an impact of the development of the aesthetic sensibility of Polish Romantics. Direct contact with nature and the landscape of Saxon Switzerland also served an important role in the shaping of spatial imagination of Polish tourists, encouraging them to explore other mountains in Europe and the world, including the Alps. On the other hand thanks to the development of tourist infrastructure in Saxon Switzerland, facilitating trips in the region and making the most attractive spots available to inexperienced tourists, micro-trips to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains marked an important stage in the development of mountain tourism on a popular-recreational level. Polish-language accounts of trips to Saxon Switzerland from the first half of the 20th century are a noteworthy manifestation of the beginnings of Polish travel literature.


2021 ◽  
pp. 188-203
Author(s):  
Elena A. Tacho-Godi ◽  
◽  
◽  

The paper considers the methodological principles of Yu.I. Aykhenvald’s literary criticism. Attention is drawn to the relationship between Aykhenvald’s declared “immanent method” and “principled impressionism” and his own “philosophy of life”. It is proved that Aykhenvald’s version of “impressionism” is much closer to the theory of symbolism than it seemed to contemporaries and researchers. The analysis takes into account both the aesthetic “sympathies” (Apollon Grigoryev, Vladimir Solovyov, Oscar Wilde, Remy de Gourmont, Émile Faguet) and “antipathies” (Vissarion Belinsky, Vasily Rozanov), that influenced Aykhenvald’s interpretation of the heritage of literary critics, philosophers, and writers of the 19th century — Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov.


2021 ◽  
pp. 16-29
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn

‘Openings’ examines the openings of short stories, which move swiftly to introduce subject, event, and motivation, using techniques of speech, viewpoint, description, situation, and timing. Awareness that closure and resolution have been built into the conception of the story from its start brings an expectation of great economy in plotting and characterization. Classic short stories of the 19th century favoured a third-person narrator in order to create the impression of a window onto life. The strategy cultivates the illusion of knowledge, reaching into the interior of characters as well as seeing their appearance. First-person narrators also pose an interesting perspective as they offer authentic psychological exploration of character.


Author(s):  
Irina Hron

Anne Charlotte Leffler was one of the most acclaimed Swedish women writers of the modern breakthrough in late 19th-century Scandinavia. Joining the circle known as Young Sweden, a leading literary movement of the 1880s, she was part of the Ibsen-inspired debate about women’s rights, sexual morality, and the normative bourgeois family structure. During her lifetime, Leffler’s plays were performed more frequently than Strindberg’s, and she was known as a notable salon hostess. After her divorce from Gustaf Edgren in 1889, she married the Italian mathematician Pasquale del Pezzo, duke of Cajanello, and settled in Italy. In 1892 she died of appendicitis at the age of forty-three. In her provocative works, sometimes close to popular fiction, Leffler depicts not only dysfunctional middle-class marriages but also 19th-century notions of love, in particular eroticism. Her major works are translated into several languages, including English, German, Russian, Italian, Croatian and Dutch.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 418-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Cornfeld ◽  
Victoria Simon ◽  
Jonathan Sterne

Abstract Since the 19th century, Shakespeare references have recurred with surprising consistency in experimental forms of media. This article considers the role of references to and adaptations of Shakespeare texts when a media form takes on a new valence for a set of users in a particular time and place. We consider two different moments at length: a commercial interactive game from 1984 that made novel use of cassettes and sound, and the production and reception of early Twitter adaptations of Shakespeare in 2010. By standing in for the aesthetic possibilities and limits of a changing media space, Shakespearean references and deviations from them serve a key role for artists and critics in debates over the legitimacy and significance of creative work in emergent media. Thus, cultural producers, critics and audiences thus use these sometimes-awkward appearances of Shakespeare as a means of describing their aesthetic potentials and limits.


2016 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 527-546
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Wojda

Summary This article examines the influence of early 19th-century operatic culture on Romantic literature by focusing on the cultural, literary and transmedial (cross-genre) reception of one of the most popular works of the early Romantic opera, Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber. More specifically, the analysis deals with that aspect of its influence which can be described as fragmentary reception. The article argues that examples of such fragmentary reception can be found in the works of Adam Mickiewicz, Heinrich Heine and Théophile Gautier. However, the central argument of this study is that the emergence of this type of trans-media links was, in a large measure, determined by a peculiar, fragmentary reception of operas. That model of reception had been popularized by a variety of trend-setting, opinion-making agents and institutions (the critics, the press), and enforced by mechanisms of socio-cultural and technological change (resulting in the broadening of the media landscape and the aesthetic sensibility of the general public). The article also claims that this reception model of the opera not only reinforced some structural elements of the operatic work itself but also prompted the writers to explore new ways of structuring their texts (a development encouraged by the upgrade of the fragment by the Romantic aesthetics). Thus early 19th-century socio-cultural and transmedial reception patterns of the opera can be seen as a spur to creativity and literary experimentation – a conclusion which casts doubt on the traditional view that it was a period when aesthetic idealism ruled supreme.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Margaret Ramsey

James Hall Nasmyth (1808–1890) was an accomplished engineer and amateur astronomer. The culmination of Nasmyth's drawings from telescopic observation, the advent of photomechanical print processes, and his interest in the causative features of the lunar surface, led to the 1874 publication of The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite. This thesis provides a comprehensive catalogue of the lunar illustrations in the first three editions, revealing the aesthetic variations in the illustrative plates due to reproduction and print processes used. These processes include: engraving, photogravure, heliotype, lithograph, chromolithograph, and four different variations of the Woodburytype. The editions are contextualized using scientific photographs as illustrations, through a discussion of astronomy, book production, and Nasmyth's biography. Through an examination of Nasmyth's use of photography and permanent print processes, this thesis argues that his lunar illustrations remain an important scientific contribution.


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