What is it about?
The four stages by which Kivi came to be declared Finland's national writer (by Tarkiainen in 1915) were (Kivi 1) Ahlqvist's vicious attacks, (Kivi 2) moralistic readings, (Kivi 3) folk-realistic readings, (Kivi 4) neo-Romantic readings, and (Kivi 5) folk-humorist readings. Kivis 2-5 were reactions against Kivi 1. Kivi 5, Tarkiainen's construct, encompasses and encapsulates the whole range.
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Why is it important?
The enumeration of Kivis 1-5 is new to Finnish Kivi studies, but in fact the series of reading strategies is quite familiar from other 19th-century studies.
Perspectives
I have dreamed about writing a monograph on Kivi since the 1980s, and began to buy up classic critical studies of his work in Finnish used book shops back then. This is one chapter in the result--and in many ways the core of the monograph that I first envisioned, which would have been more of a single-author study without the world-lit ramifications.
Professor Douglas J. Robinson
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Majoritizing Kivi: Towards nl Hypercanonization, January 2017, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004340268_004.
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