Nordic Literature: A comparative history

Nordic Literature: A comparative history is a two-volume comparative analysis of the literature of the Nordic region. Bringing together the literature of Finland, continental Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Sápmi), and the insular region (Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands), each volume of this two-volume project adopts a new frame through which one can recognize and analyze significant nodes of literary practice. Stretching existing notions of temporally linear, nationally centered literary history, this approach allows questions of internal regional similarities and differences to emerge more strongly. This second volume, Figural nodes, devotes its attention to the prominent figural clusters in literature by Nordic writers from medieval to contemporary times. Organized around various figurations of affect, need, detachment, and embodiment, this volume examines the productive historical contingency of the “North” as a literary space through nationally juxtaposed and comparative synthetic analysis.