Entangled histories and divided audiences: overhearing Joseph Conrad, W. G. Sebald, and Dan Jacobson. Issue 3 (2nd July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kaakinen, Kaisa
• Is Part Of: Journal of Baltic studies. Volume 51:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 373
• Page End: 388
• Publication Date: 2020-07-02
• Subjects: Comparative literature -- transcultural memory studies -- postcolonial studies -- post-Soviet studies -- central and eastern Europe; Baltic States -- Periodicals; 947.9005
• DOI: 10.1080/01629778.2020.1779096
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0162-9778

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article focuses on specific effects that occur when transnational literary texts encounter diverse readerships that do not share the same historical imaginary. The author highlights a readerly dynamic of 'overhearing, ' in which readers realize their outsider position within the discourse of a text but also recognize something sufficiently familiar in it to imagine a linkage to their own historical and social position. This dynamic is studied through texts by twentieth-century émigré authors Joseph Conrad and W. G. Sebald as well as by Dan Jacobson, whose memoir on the Lithuanian past of his Jewish family is referenced by Sebald.