Anti-utopian Mood, Liminality, and Literature. Irma Ratiani
Irma Ratiani
Anti-utopian Mood,
Liminality, and Literature
From International Literary Experience to Georgian.
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Cover illustration by Rezo Mirianashvili.
ISBN 978-3-631-82156-5 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-82905-9 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-82906-6 (EPUB)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-82907-3 (MOBI)
DOI 10.3726/b17426
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Berlin 2020
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About the author
Irma Ratiani is a Georgian scholar and translator. She is a professor at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia) and the chair of the Department of General and Comparative Literary Studies. She is a director of Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature and Honorable President of Georgian Comparative Literature Association (GCLA).
About the book
The book deals with the problem of anti-utopian way of thinking in literature, its preconditions, and variations in the 20th century. Moreover, it is a first attempt to read one of the most prominent Georgian texts – Jakho’s Dispossessed by the Georgian writer Mikheil Javakhishvili – in the context of anti-utopian thinking. The book aims to present how relevant 20th century Georgian literature is to this literary trend. Research was conducted in the frame of comparative studies. The book offers a comprehensive analysis of Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading and Bend Sinister, and Jakho’s Dispossessed by Mikheil Javakhishvili.
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To the memory of Ariann Tchanturia
Table of Contents
Chapter One. Literary Anti-Utopia and the General Trends of Its Development
1.1. Utopia. Ou Topos or Eu Topos?
1.2. Utopia and Anti-Utopia – from Ambivalent Unity to Conceptual Determination
1.3. The Philosophical and Literary Predecessors of Anti-Utopian Genre
Chapter Two. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches toward the Study of Literary Anti-Utopia
2.1. Evolution of Genre Theory and the Holistic Method
2.2. Genre Peculiarities of Anti-Utopian Text
2.3. Time-Space Hypotheses, and Anti-Utopia in Eschatological Perspective
2.4. Liminality and the Liminal Theory of Conceptualization of Time and Space
Chapter Three. Liminal Models of Chronotope in 20th-Century Eschatological Anti-Utopia: Vladimir Nabokov’s – “Invitation to a Beheading” and “Bend Sinister”, and Mikheil Javakhishvili’s “Jaqo’s Dispossessed”
3.1. The Subjective Paradigm of Conceptualization of Time
3.2. Liminal Models of Artistic Time and Space and Their Genre-Determining Function
3.2.1. Invitation to a Beheading
3.2.2. Bend Sinister
3.2.3. Jaqo’s Dispossessed
Brief Conclusions
References
Index
This book was published in Georgia in 2006. After more than ten years, I’ve encouraged myself to make an English version of the book and offer it to the international reader. This could not have been achieved without the help and support of my colleagues and family. I would like to take this opportunity to convey my deep appreciation toward them: editor of the Georgian text – Merab Gaganidze, my dear friend and Professor of Tbilisi Free University, also, reviewers – Professor Rusudan Tsanava, Prof. Inga Milorava and Prof. Konstantine Bregadze.
Special thanks to late Ariann Tchanturia to whom this book is dedicated, the first translator of all my scholarly articles and books, a talented and humble man, who was devoted to his job and professional responsibilities.
It is my pleasure to express special gratitude to the Publishing House, Tbilisi State University, for their support in the first Georgian publication of the book in 2006.
Special thanks should be extended to my respectable colleague Sadao Tsukui, professor of Osaka University in the 1990s, whose support was utmost in the beginning of this project as well as the process of international presentation of separate parts of the book. His opinion and recommendations were essential.
And in the end, I would like to thank my dear husband, Kakhaber Kordzaia, for being patient and supportive throughout all the years that I worked on this book.
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