Locating August Strindberg's Prose

'Locating August Strindberg's Prose is a fascinating and probing study on the prose of August Strindberg, one of the most radical protagonists of Modernist literature. Anna Westerstahl Stenport combines a broad historical perspective with minute analysis as she focuses on and maps such aspects of modernity as railway travel, divorce, photography, city streets, and phonographs. By following the geographically peripheral August Strindberg on his way to the well-known literary centers of Berlin and Paris, Westerstahl Stenport successfully puts across her idea of modernism as rural and colonial, situated and displaced, transforming modernism into a plurality of modernisms. This book forms an original and thought-provoking argument about the Modernist as a transnational writer.' -- Ulf Olsson, Stockholm University 'Locating August Strindberg's Prose is both thoughtful and stimulating. Anna Westerstahl Stenport succeeds, as no one else has before her, in convincing the reader that Strindberg's prose can and should be read as a powerful contributor to European modernism. Her use of his transnational, multilingual identity and her analysis of the prose texts that he created during his travels are genuinely insightful and original.' -- Ross Shideler, Professor of Comparative Literature and Scandinavian, UCLA 'A superb study of Strindberg as a crucial European modernist whose prose has been overlooked for too long, Locating August Strindberg's Prose also makes a strong case for transnationalism as the foundation of European modernism. This is required reading for anyone interested in the relations between modernism and transnationalism, comparative modernisms, and the new spatial turn in modernist studies, and will appeal to those engaged by a great writer whose texts challenge the link between author and national tradition on which so much scholarship still relies.' -- Mark Wollaeger, Department of English, Vanderbilt University

By contextualizing August Strindberg against other early modernists, including Kafka, Conrad, Rilke, and Breton, Stenport emphasizes the burgeoning transnationality of literature at the turn of the last century.

The setting of a novel is more than just an anonymous, interchangeable backdrop. In Locating August Strindberg's Prose, Anna Westerståhl Stenport argues that spatial setting is a key - though often neglected - tool for exploring the fundamentals of European literary modernism.

Stenport examines the importance of location by exploring the prose of Swedish exile August Strindberg (1849-1912), challenging previous studies of the author that have focused on identity and subject formation. Strindberg wrote in both Swedish and French, situating his stories in various places across Europe - from Berlin to the French countryside, the Austrian Alps, and Stockholm - to purposely destabilize concepts of national belonging, language, and literary history. Close readings of Strindberg's prose find that his boundary-challenging narratives redefine and rewrite the meaning of a marginal literary identity. By contextualizing Strindberg against other early modernists, including Kafka, Conrad, Rilke, and Breton, Stenport emphasizes the burgeoning transnationality of literature at the turn of the last century.