Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (Columbia/Hurst) - Softcover

Goldsworthy, Vesna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231704232 ISBN 13: 9780231704236

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Published more than a decade ago, Inventing Ruritania has become a standard study of the West's attitude toward the Balkans -- the "Wild East" of Europe. With its Western and Oriental influences, the Balkans have both attracted and repelled outsiders, offering a tantalizing alternative to familiar society. Completely different from "us" yet exactly what "we" used to be, the Balkans have particularly provided Western European and American writers and filmmakers with a wealth of images, characters, and ideas. In her prodigiously researched volume, Vesna Goldsworthy explores the entertainment industry's lucrative exploitation of Balkan history and geography and its affect on Western conceptions of the region. She traces the national, religious, and sexual fears foreign observers project onto Balkan lands and the use of Balkan archetypes. The work of an Anglo-Serbian writer and former BBC journalist turned academic, Inventing Ruritania maps an imaginary geography that has had pa

About this title

About the Author

Vesna Goldsworthy is professor of English literature and creative writing at Kingston University and the author of several widely translated and award-winning volumes. She published a best-selling memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries, which was serialized in The Times and was chosen as a Book of the Week by BBC Radio 4. She is also the author of a Crashaw Prize-winning poetry collection, The Angel of Salonika, named one of the Best Poetry Books of 2011 by The Times.

From Library Journal

This scholarly study examines how 19th-century writers and later filmmakers have helped to shape Western perception of the Balkans. Goldsworthy (English, Birkbeck Coll.) presents writers from Bram Stoker (Dracula) and Anthony Hope (Ruritania) to Graham Greene, Lord Byron, and George Bernard Shaw, to name a few. Goldsworthy shows how an identifiable Balkan identity emerged from these writers that has held sway over the past century. The result is what she calls a "narrative colonization" of the BalkansAthat is, its literary exploitation, which has resulted in its continued misrepresentation. While her thesis is interesting, it seems to follow the current trend toward politicizing literary studies, making her work of interest mainly to academic collections.ARon Ratliff, Chapman H.S. Lib., KS
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About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0231704232
• ISBN 13: 9780231704236
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288