Suchergebnisse

The nineteenth century has been called an age of monuments. In some places even one piece made a difference. This book is a study of the intellectual background and physical making of Finland's first public sculpture, the statue of Professor Henrik Gabriel Porthan by Carl Eneas Sjöstrand. The idealised but sombre Porthan was born under the influence of German neoclassicism. Development on the project was slow but sure. The Swedish artist had to be supported over three years while he was putting together his first monumental piece in Munich and Rome, after which came another three years wait before the cast arrived to Finland. The bronze sculpture, commissioned by the Finnish Literary Society and raised by public subscriptions from people of all classes, was unveiled in the city of Turku in September 1864. Finns took some pride in the fact that, unlike other nations that had raised monuments to kings and generals, here the first place was given to a scholar. In this study Sjöstrand's pioneering bronze is placed in a wider context and compared with works by his precursors and contemporaries in the international sculptor colony of Rome.

The book presents the biographies and work lists of 126 Finnish women composers born between 1784 and 1909. Based on large-scale archival research, it is the first comprehensive historical account of Finnish women composers and their cultural heritage. The authors draw on feminist music history and the sociohistorical approach to find out who these women were, what kind of music they wrote, and how their careers reflected European cultural and social history. The treatise highlights the influence of girls' schools, women's suffrage movements and other socio-political developments on the musical culture of women. Concepts such as "composer", "woman" and "Finnish" were assumed to be open and inclusive throughout the research, in terms of both musical style and diversity in cultural background. In concentrating on music-making by women, the book opens up radically new vistas on Finland's music and cultural history, and it rectifies previous erroneous conceptions about women's composership and their artistic work. In short, it exposes the richness in the sonic and intellectual heritage of Finnish women composers, as well as its significance in society today.

Narrative After Postmodernism takes a critical and practical look at the cultural theories of what comes after postmodernism or the postmodern. Alongside contemporary literary authors, the anthology studies diverse contemporary textual phenomena from TV shows to online fan theories and survivalist blogs. The essays compiled in this anthology tentatively apply the theories of the post-postmodern to contemporary texts to see how they might open up for analysis within their new theoretical frameworks or challenge them.The introduction, co-written by all the authors of this volume, introduces the most influential theories of post-postmodernism and contextualizes them within broader intellectual trends of the early 21st Century. The three essays comprising the first part of the volume discuss some of the theories of the postmodern in relation to contemporary works that seem to challenge them. Yet they also strive to clarify and sharpen some of the ideas proposed in the theories of the post-postmodern.The second part of the volume aims to show that it is not only the contemporary texts that move beyond the postmodern – the ways of reading literature and interpreting artworks in different media are also changing. The essays in the second part of the volume inquire about the effects of the contemporary literary culture on the methods of interpretation and ways of reading.