Chapter from the book: Helgesson, S et al. 2018. World Literatures: Exploring the Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Exchange.
This chapter examines the strategies according to which the Swedish author Elsa Lindberg-Dovlette’s stories, set in Ottoman harems of Constantinople in the early twentieth century, create a distinctive aesthetic world (Hayot, 2012). It is demonstrated that this world is constructed out of the limited and distorted views from behind the veil. By means of their aesthetic “worldedness”, Lindberg-Dovlette’s stories make the secluded milieus of women in the harems of cosmopolitan Constantinople – their special limited view and reduced mobility – accessible to western readers in their vernacular languages, not only in Swedish, but also in translation into Finnish, German, French and Dutch.
Bodin, H. 2018. Seclusion versus Accessibility: The Harems of Constantinople as Aesthetic Worlds in Stories by Elsa Lindberg-Dovlette. In: Helgesson, S et al (eds.), World Literatures. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bat.u
This is an Open Access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (unless stated otherwise), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author(s).
This book has been peer reviewed. See our Peer Review Policies for more information.
Published on Nov. 22, 2018