European Local-Color Literature: National Tales, Dorfgeschichten, Romans Champetres - Softcover

"Donovan does an admirable job of directing her readers' attention to many relatively unfamiliar, nineteenth-century works from these two countries, as well as from France and Germany. The incisive comparisons she draws between all these stories highlight various ways in which local-color literature represented a locus for political and cultural dissent during a period when European thought was saturated with the totalizing force of a post-Enlightenment drive toward modernization. This pioneering study opens the way for further informed comparative analysis of the origins, forms, and influences of this distinctive form of writing." --Anne Markey; Trinity College, Dublin; Comparative Literature Studies "Full of clever literary insights and draws comparisons between texts written in different languages in ambitious and intelligent ways." --James Moran, University of Nottingham, Comparative Critical Studies

A pioneering work in comparative European literature by a leading American scholar.