What is it about?
The idea is that the efforts expended in Finland to canonize Kivi as Finland's greatest writer, which culminated in 1915, have militated against his canonization as world literature, because (a) the national efforts have been so nationalist that (b) translators have tended to render him "respectfully" rather than with literary intensity.
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Why is it important?
This chapter is of obvious importance to scholars of Finnish literature; its importance for non-Finnish scholars of world literature lies in its argument that excessive nationalism in the promotion of a work tends to negatively affect the translation strategies expended on it.
Perspectives
I have been wanting to write a monograph about Aleksis Kivi for a good three decades. This is the chapter that enabled me to transcend my original single-author-study conception of the book.
Professor Douglas J. Robinson
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Transmajoritizing Kivi: Towards (Failed) wl Hypercanonization, January 2017, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004340268_005.
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