Revolution poses a unique challenge to writers and artists, namely that of representing something unprecedented and unique. This challenge becomes even greater when the events have not been experienced firsthand, when they take place somewhere else and are observed only in mediated ways (through letters, the press, etc.). A revolution seen 'from afar' can seem very different to one seen 'up close' and can lead to very different forms of artistic and literary expressions.
The goal of the U4 network 'Reverberations of Revolution' is to explore how writers, artists and intellectuals responded to and represented revolutions taking place in other parts of the world in a variety of genres — novels, essays, poetry, spectacles, art works, journalism, caricatures and life-writing — and how discussions of these uprisings impacted domestic political discourse and debate.
The network is a collaboration between literary scholars, art historians and historians whose expertise spans various national traditions. The overall aim is to move away from narrow national approaches to revolution and to explore how political uprisings along with the discourses and revolutionary culture they generated often resonated far beyond the borders of the states that were directly affected.
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