ÁGNES GYÖRKE – IMOLA BÜLGÖZDI (eds.): Geographies of Affect in Contemporary Literature and Visual Culture: Central Europe and the West

Abstract

Recenzie / Book Reviews of Secrets with joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, viewing the former novel not only in relation to its prototext, but mainly as a product of a new, postcolonial literary history of the global South with its unique matrix of textual and cultural values. The volume Taking Stock offers a valuable overview of current trends in comparative literature, which i follow due to my own research and background in translation studies (a discipline which itself emerged partly from this field). Since this book is very broad in scope, nearly any scholar of literature and cultural history will find some topics, approaches, concepts, and references of interest. given that the collected texts are for the most part, case studies, they can be viewed as heuristic examples as well. However, the title of the book can be seen as its primary drawback. What the individual studies bring to the fore in terms of range and novelty of topics and approaches, the book lacks in conception. The phrase “taking stock” implies the need to catalog and describe what has been done; one takes stock to think and move on. Yet the introduction to the volume is very brief and its declaration that “[v]iewed conjointly, the essays seek to expose enduring deep structures of Comparative Literature” (3) seems self-servingly vague. What it needs instead is a deeper, extensive introduction that would help readers (some of whom might not be experts in comparative literature) understand the development of the discipline over the last 25 years. if one is to assume that the reader will understand the position of the book in the system of the discipline only by virtue of its being part of an established and well-known series, this does great disservice to an otherwise well-edited collection and goes against the spirit of openness and transdisciplinarity epitomized by its authors. igOr tYŠŠ institute of World Literature SaS Slovak republic OrCid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3172-9369