Abstract Henriette Partzsch
Fredrika Bremer visits the Pope: The Spanish Reception of a Successful Swedish Woman Writer
The Spanish Reception of a Successful Swedish Woman Writer - Fredrika Bremer (1801-1865) - is an excellent test case for Pascale Casanova's ideas about the relations between small and large literary cultures. Born near Åbo/Turku (today Finland), the Swedish-language author was one of the few women writers from the European periphery whose work was received with much attention in the "exporting" centres of Great Britain and France, as well as in smaller literary cultures (see the the reception entries for her in the WomenWriters database). Her importance for the Netherlands for instance is now well-established; she was seen as a positive role model, and in opposition to the dangers associated with George Sand. In contrast, Bremer's reception in Spain has not yet been mapped.
I will provide a first and very provisional overview of Bremer's presence in Spain before focusing on the two translations of Grannarne (1837). The first was serialised under the title Los vecinos in the Catholic and reactionary newspaper La Esperanza in 1854, the second published in Paris by the liberal author Faustina Sáez de Melgar in 1883. The comparison and contextualisation of both translations will help us achieve a better understanding of strategies of appropriation in smaller literatures. Issues at stake in the case of the Spanish reception of this Protestant author from Northern Europe are especially gender identity, religion and Bremer's role in the development of feminism.
AsK, October 2012
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