Russell West

Russell West-Pavlov

Rachael Langford

Diaristic writing has often been relegated to the fringes of literary studies as a marginal cultural activity. This volume seeks to challenge that marginality by exploring some of the wide-ranging forms of literary practice encompassed by diaristic writing in Europe from the Renaissance to the present day. The volume deals with questions of the value and status of the diary, of the functioning of the diary in society and history, and of the reception and interpretation of the multifarious forms of first-person daily writing. The volume investigates diaries across national borders and linguistic boundaries, so as to make the hitherto marginal place of the private journal a site of fruitful interdisciplinary encounters. Australian, British, Catalonian, French, German and Italian critics examine diaries dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, within the context of the literature, history and literary history of Catalonia, England, France, Germany and Italy. A prime concern of the essays in this collection is to highlight the cultural, generic and historical diversity of the diary, while emphasising the points of convergence between different texts and differing critical approaches to the texts. The volume will be of interest to students and teachers of European and comparative literature.

Diaries in European Literature and History

Marginal Voices, Marginal Forms

This study examines the relations between the work of the Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad and the French Nobel Prize winner André Gide. Gide's translation of Conrad'sTyphoon is read as a work belonging paradoxically to the oeuvres of both writers, where their respective preoccupations meet with illuminating results. Focusing also on other major works by Conrad and Gide, the study suggests that the intertextual and personal interaction between these two masters of 20th Century fiction was governed by processes of identification and projection, conflict between master and disciple and a consequent resistant reading of texts, and confrontation with linguistic and cultural heterogeneity.Issues of translation theory, psychoanalysis and intertextuality are brought together to offer a glimpse of a possible dialogue between literature and ethics. This study will be of interest to students and researchers in English, French and Comparative Literature.

Russell West

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