Publisher Description

This collection of essays explores the contact zones produced by the migrations of two German-born cultural figures: New York Dada poet and artist Else Plotz (1874-1927), better known as Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven; and writer and translator Felix Paul Greve (1879-1948), known in Canada as Frederick Philip Grove. Features contributions by Richard Cavell, Jutta Ernst, Irene Gammel, Paul Hjartarson, Klaus Martens and Paul Morris and includes Morris's translation of Greve's 'Randarabesken zu Oscar Wilde'.

Back Cover

Translators mediate between cultures; they negotiate the transfer of meaning from one word and world to another. Writers who migrate, uprooting themselves from one world and settling in another, also mediate between cultures and are mediated by them. This collection of essays explores the contact zones produced by the migrations of two German-born cultural figures: New York Dada poet and artist Else Pl

Author Biography

Paul Hjartarson is Professor Emeritus in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. His scholarly work is on life-writing, Canadian literature, modernism, print culture and the digital humanities. His most recent book, co-authored with Shirley Neuman, is The Thinking Heart: The Literary Archive of Wilfred Watson (2014). Until his retirement, Paul Hjartarson was a Professor of English at the University of Alberta and has published on both Baroness Elsa and Frederick Philip Grove. Tracy Kulba is a SSHRCC Doctoral Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Alberta. She lives in Edmonton.

Review

"You can see why critics and scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have been taking greater interest in the lives of Felix Paul Greve and the baroness. Individually and together, the two of them moved back and forth across borders certainly but also across lines of personal identity, including those related to gender studies, the biggest growth industry in academia the past few years...[The Politics of Cultural Mediation] includes work by Irene Gammel and one of Canada's most dynamic, prolific and wide-ranging literary scholars, Richard Cavell of the University of B.C." George Fetherling, The New Brunswick Reader, article reprinted in The Vancover Sun "This handsome volume offers a systematic and coherent examination of cultural mediation that draws on contemporary critical theory as well as on the philosophical and aesthetic concepts of the nineteenth century relevant to the two "cultural mediators" on whom it is centred...Paul Hjartarson's account of the socio-historical context in which Grove found himself on coming to Canada and how it manifested itself not only in Grove's novels but also in his personal life is nothing short of a documentary tour de force...This book represents an important expansion of the debate on cultural mediation launched by Klaus Martens in a preceding volume titled Pioneering North America: Mediators of European Literature and Culture. Its significance for postcolonial theory and research goes well beyond the life and works of the figures who constitute its thematic focus." Rosmarin Heidenreich, Canadian Literature 184, Spring 2005 "After the useful introduction by the editors elaborating on the concept of cultural mediation by making use of contemporary practitioners such as Salman Rushdie, the book consists of three parts, each of them offering different facets of the act of 'bearing' culture across boundaries and of 'being borne' across cultures. The first and second parts focus on the Baroness and FPG respectively in the context of cultural mediation in Europe and North America, and the third one consists of a key text on cultural mediation by Greve himself...[T]his is a very important and highly readable publication that will revive general interest in the writing of Grove, which still offers a rich field of historical and literary investigation, and especially in the fascinating life and work of the Baroness." University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 1, Winter 2004/5

Long Description

Translators mediate between cultures; they negotiate the transfer of meaning from one word and world to another. Writers who migrate, uprooting themselves from one world and settling in another, also mediate between cultures and are mediated by them. This collection of essays explores the contact zones produced by the migrations of two German-born cultural figures: New York Dada poet and artist Else Pl

Review Quote

"You can see why critics and scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have been taking greater interest in the lives of Felix Paul Greve and the baroness. Individually and together, the two of them moved back and forth across borders certainly but also across lines of personal identity, including those related to gender studies, the biggest growth industry in academia the past few years....[The Politics of Cultural Mediation] includes work by Irene Gammel and one of Canada's most dynamic, prolific and wide-ranging literary scholars, Richard Cavell of the University of B.C." George Fetherling, The New Brunswick Reader, article reprinted in The Vancouver Sun

Feature

B&W photos, index, bibliography

Details