Great Immortality
Studies on European Cultural Sainthood
Published on 11. April 2019
Book
Hardback
378 pages
978-90-04-36429-5 (ISBN)
Description
Winner of the Excellence Award for Collaborative Research granted by the European Society of Comparative Literature (ESCL)
In Great Immortality, twenty scholars from considerably different cultural backgrounds explore the ways in which certain poets, writers, and artists in Europe have become major figures of cultural memory. Through individual case studies, many of the contributors expand and challenge the concepts of cultural sainthood and canonization as developed by Marijan Dovic and Jon Karl Helgason in National Poets, Cultural Saints: Canonization and Commemorative Cults of Writers in Europe (Brill, 2017). Even though the major focus of the book is the nineteenth-century cults of national poets, the volume examines a wide variety of cases in a very broad temporal and geographical framework - from Dante and Petrarch to the most recent attempts to sanctify artists by both the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and from the rise of a medieval Icelandic author of sagas to the veneration of a poet and national leader in Georgia.
Contributors are: Bojan Baskar, Marijan Dovic, Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson, David Fishelov, Jernej Habjan, Simon Halink, Jon Karl Helgason, Harald Hendrix, Andraz Jez, Marko Juvan, Alenka Koron, Roman Koropeckyj, Joep Leerssen, Christian Noack, Jaume Subirana, Magi Sunyer, Andreas Stynen, Andrei Terian, Bela Tsipuria, and Luka Vidmar.
In Great Immortality, twenty scholars from considerably different cultural backgrounds explore the ways in which certain poets, writers, and artists in Europe have become major figures of cultural memory. Through individual case studies, many of the contributors expand and challenge the concepts of cultural sainthood and canonization as developed by Marijan Dovic and Jon Karl Helgason in National Poets, Cultural Saints: Canonization and Commemorative Cults of Writers in Europe (Brill, 2017). Even though the major focus of the book is the nineteenth-century cults of national poets, the volume examines a wide variety of cases in a very broad temporal and geographical framework - from Dante and Petrarch to the most recent attempts to sanctify artists by both the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and from the rise of a medieval Icelandic author of sagas to the veneration of a poet and national leader in Georgia.
Contributors are: Bojan Baskar, Marijan Dovic, Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson, David Fishelov, Jernej Habjan, Simon Halink, Jon Karl Helgason, Harald Hendrix, Andraz Jez, Marko Juvan, Alenka Koron, Roman Koropeckyj, Joep Leerssen, Christian Noack, Jaume Subirana, Magi Sunyer, Andreas Stynen, Andrei Terian, Bela Tsipuria, and Luka Vidmar.
Reviews / Votes
"The culture-specific particularities and the local twists to the editors' foundational model keep the individual case studies intriguing. [...]. Great Immortality contributes in meaningful and significant ways to the new surge of nationalism studies. [...] "Brill's book series National Cultivation of Culture, in which Helgason and Dovic's excellent volume appears, keeps on producing such fine scholarship to investigate these complex matters further". Sandor Hites, in Literary Research, Fall 2020."A stimulating and rich collection of essays, Great Immortality introduces and explores the metaphor of "cultural saint" in its bid to understand the complex relationship between authors' and creative artists' lives, their reception by their contemporaries and their posterity, and the relationship of these factors to 19th-century romantic nationalism. [...] The volume's engagement with the nature of cultus presents not only important insights into European cultural history but also into 19th- and early 20th-century memory politics and canon formations." Zsuzsanna Varga, in CompLit Journal of European Literature, Arts and Society, 2022.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-04-36429-5 (9789004364295)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Marijan Dovic is an associate professor at the ZRC SAZU Institute of the Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies in Ljubljana. He has published extensively in Slovenian and English on cultural nationalism, national poets, the literary canon, systems theory, the avant-garde, and authorship.
Jon Karl Helgason is a professor in the Department of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland. He has published monographs and articles on cultural history, cultural saints, metafiction and the afterlife of Iceland's medieval literature.
Jon Karl Helgason is a professor in the Department of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland. He has published monographs and articles on cultural history, cultural saints, metafiction and the afterlife of Iceland's medieval literature.
Content
?Preface
?Marko Juvan and Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson
?Acknowledgements
?List of Figures
?Notes on Contributors
?Introduction
?Marijan Dovic and Jon Karl Helgason
Part 1:
1?Sacral States: The Politics of Worship, Religious and Secular
?Joep Leerssen
2?Framing the Bones of Dante and Petrarch: Literary Cults and Scientific Discourses
?Harald Hendrix
Part 2:
3?Taming a Romantic: The Canonization of Adam Mickiewicz
?Roman Koropeckyj
4?The Riddles of the Shevchenko Cult
?Christian Noack
5?Hagiographic Discourse in the Early Biographies of France Preseren
?Alenka Koron
6?Stanko Vraz and the Missing Saints of the Illyrian Movement
?Andraz Jez
Part 3:
7?Bialik the Prophet and the Modern Hebrew Canon
?David Fishelov
8?Jacint Verdaguer, a Catalan Cultural Saint
?Magi Sunyer and Jaume Subirana
9?"Altars of the Flemish Movement": Tombstones and Rituals of Nation-Building
?Andreas Stynen
Part 4:
10?Hero or Traitor? The Cultural Canonization of Snorri Sturluson in Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Beyond
?Simon Halink
11?Ilia Chavchavadze: Georgia's Cultural Saint and a Saint of the Georgian Orthodox Church
?Bela Tsipuria
12?The Third Canonization of Njegos, the National Poet of Montenegro
?Bojan Baskar
Part 5:
13?Prophet, Martyr, Saint: Mihai Eminescu's Lateral Canonization
?Andrei Terian
14?Antoni Gaudi and Joze Plecnik: Two Architects on the Path from Cultural Canonization to Catholic Beatification
?Luka Vidmar
15?From the Culture of Saints to the Saints of Culture: The Saint and the Writer between Life and Work
?Jernej Habjan
?Copyright of Figures
?Index of Names
?Marko Juvan and Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson
?Acknowledgements
?List of Figures
?Notes on Contributors
?Introduction
?Marijan Dovic and Jon Karl Helgason
Part 1:
1?Sacral States: The Politics of Worship, Religious and Secular
?Joep Leerssen
2?Framing the Bones of Dante and Petrarch: Literary Cults and Scientific Discourses
?Harald Hendrix
Part 2:
3?Taming a Romantic: The Canonization of Adam Mickiewicz
?Roman Koropeckyj
4?The Riddles of the Shevchenko Cult
?Christian Noack
5?Hagiographic Discourse in the Early Biographies of France Preseren
?Alenka Koron
6?Stanko Vraz and the Missing Saints of the Illyrian Movement
?Andraz Jez
Part 3:
7?Bialik the Prophet and the Modern Hebrew Canon
?David Fishelov
8?Jacint Verdaguer, a Catalan Cultural Saint
?Magi Sunyer and Jaume Subirana
9?"Altars of the Flemish Movement": Tombstones and Rituals of Nation-Building
?Andreas Stynen
Part 4:
10?Hero or Traitor? The Cultural Canonization of Snorri Sturluson in Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Beyond
?Simon Halink
11?Ilia Chavchavadze: Georgia's Cultural Saint and a Saint of the Georgian Orthodox Church
?Bela Tsipuria
12?The Third Canonization of Njegos, the National Poet of Montenegro
?Bojan Baskar
Part 5:
13?Prophet, Martyr, Saint: Mihai Eminescu's Lateral Canonization
?Andrei Terian
14?Antoni Gaudi and Joze Plecnik: Two Architects on the Path from Cultural Canonization to Catholic Beatification
?Luka Vidmar
15?From the Culture of Saints to the Saints of Culture: The Saint and the Writer between Life and Work
?Jernej Habjan
?Copyright of Figures
?Index of Names