Kirsten Sandrock - Böcker

Perhaps more timely than ever, Margaret Atwood’s Aesthetics offers novel perspectives on both contemporary and canonical topics in Margaret Atwood’s work with a special focus on the intersections of literature and politics. Arguably one of the most political writers of our times, Atwood’s oeuvre subtly and overtly entangles readers in the dialectics of personal and political power asymmetries intrinsic to her aesthetic practices. The collection takes its cue from the concept of the ‘artpolitical’ as coined by Crispin Sartwell, whose afterword addresses Atwood’s aesthetic and imaginative material world-construction and explores the interrelationship between literatures and aesthetic as well as political systems in Atwood’s works. Individual chapters of Margaret Atwood’s Aesthetics contribute to increasingly burning questions concerning the relevance of literature today by drawing on a variety of critical perspectives, including Anthropocene studies, gender, intersectionality, the nonhuman and the posthuman, Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, risk studies, nationhood, intermediality, and teaching. Chapters offer fresh views on some of Atwood’s most prominent works, such as The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments and their transmedial adaptations, while other chapters focus on Atwood’s latest publications as well as on under-researched works, including her graphic novels and her web-serialized publications. Margaret Atwood’s Aesthetics provides unique insights into the aesthetic and political power of Atwood’s oeuvre, arguing that literary and media representations and cultural adaptation practices contain a significant transformative potential that reaches beyond the page.

Examines why and how cultural encounters between East Asia and Europe are framed as failures Opens up fresh perspectives on intercultural encounters by focusing on failures as a paradigm Argues that a focus on failure helps to uncover the normative perspectives and expectations of intercultural encountersEstablishes that intercultural encounters add a valuable new perspective to the emerging field of failure studiesOften, the story of encounters between Asia and the West has been told as one of success, of cross-fertilization, reciprocal stimulation and an exchange of commodities and knowledge. Yet, the history of East-West encounters is riddled with prominent examples of misunderstandings, ignorance, unrealistic expectations or unbridgeable cultural differences. Bringing together scholars working across Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, English Studies and French Studies, this book presents new perspectives on such instances by theorizing epistemologies of failure. Providing examples from different periods and disciplines, it reveals how culturally informed expectations and biases, performative and linguistic practices and imaginative horizons specific to the cultures involved shape notions of failure and success. Case studies range from first encounters in the early modern period to contemporary novels and focus on actual or imaginary encounters between East Asia and Western European cultures.

This book focuses on three undertakings at Nova Scotia (1620s), East New Jersey (1680s) and the Isthmus of Panama, then known as Darien (1690s). Analysing works written in the larger context of the Scottish Atlantic, it examines how the Atlantic influenced seventeenth-century Scottish literature and vice versa. The relationship between art and ideology is key to the author’s discussion as Sandrock argues early modern writing employed utopianism as a tool for empire-building and as a means of claiming power over the Atlantic.

Brings together previously dispersed sources to argue for a tradition of Scottish colonial writing before the Union of ParliamentsOffers the first comprehensive study of Scottish colonial literature before 1707Focus on Scotland contributes to the diversification of studies on the early British Empire Provides a fresh argument about Atlantic writing contributing to the transformation of utopian literature from a fictional to a reformist genreEnters debates about Scotland's position in colonial and postcolonial studies through its focus on pre-1707 Atlantic literature This book focuses on three undertakings at Nova Scotia (1620s), East New Jersey (1680s) and the Isthmus of Panama, then known as Darien (1690s). Analysing works written in the larger context of the Scottish Atlantic, it examines how the Atlantic influenced seventeenth-century Scottish literature and vice versa. The relationship between art and ideology is key to the author's discussion as Sandrock argues early modern writing employed utopianism as a tool for empire-building and as a means of claiming power over the Atlantic.