Crippled City : Joel Lehtonen’s Krokelby as a Radical Inversion of Finnish National Romantic Landscapes
In the novels Rakastunut rampa (A Cripple in Love, 1922) and Henkien taistelu (The Battle of the Spirits, 1933), Joel Lehtonen has constructed an imaginary environment that is at once one of the most disturbing and one of the most original landscapes to be found in the Finnish literature of the last...
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ftunivhelsihelda:oai:helda.helsinki.fi:10138/38604 2023-10-25T01:40:06+02:00 Crippled City : Joel Lehtonen’s Krokelby as a Radical Inversion of Finnish National Romantic Landscapes Ameel, Lieven 2013-03-22T13:37:24Z fulltext application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/10138/38604 eng eng Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies 978-952-10-8578-9 Language, Space and Power : Urban Entanglements COLLeGIUM: Studies across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences 13 1796-2986 918 http://hdl.handle.net/10138/38604 openAccess © author(s) & Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies urban periphery Menippean satire city literature Joel Lehtonen Artikkeli Article 2013 ftunivhelsihelda 2023-09-27T23:00:41Z In the novels Rakastunut rampa (A Cripple in Love, 1922) and Henkien taistelu (The Battle of the Spirits, 1933), Joel Lehtonen has constructed an imaginary environment that is at once one of the most disturbing and one of the most original landscapes to be found in the Finnish literature of the last century: the suburb of Krokelby. This deformed landscape, neither city nor countryside, is composed of disconcerting natural elements and crooked houses, and inhabited by grotesque characters. This article analyses the ways in which the literary landscape of Krokelby constitutes a radical inversion of more traditional images of Finnish symbolic landscapes, such as the national-romantic lake district of Eastern Finland, and the complex images of turn-of-the-century Helsinki. In Lehtonen’s novels, we find a carnivalisation of the proud and pure expanses of Karelia: a degenerate wasteland, filled with derelict houses; a Dante-esque scatological nightmare. The satirical and pessimistic way in which Lehtonen describes these suburban surroundings is prototypical for the direction in which literary descriptions of Helsinki and its suburbs were gradually evolving from the 1920s onwards: towards an ever more generic city, an in-between landscape of uprooted countryside and deformed cityscape. These descriptions foreshadow later representations of what arguably has become the most influential symbolic landscape in modern Finnish movies and literature: the suburbs. Article in Journal/Newspaper karelia* Helsingfors Universitet: HELDA – Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto |
institution |
Open Polar |
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Helsingfors Universitet: HELDA – Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto |
op_collection_id |
ftunivhelsihelda |
language |
English |
topic |
urban periphery Menippean satire city literature Joel Lehtonen |
spellingShingle |
urban periphery Menippean satire city literature Joel Lehtonen Ameel, Lieven Crippled City : Joel Lehtonen’s Krokelby as a Radical Inversion of Finnish National Romantic Landscapes |
topic_facet |
urban periphery Menippean satire city literature Joel Lehtonen |
description |
In the novels Rakastunut rampa (A Cripple in Love, 1922) and Henkien taistelu (The Battle of the Spirits, 1933), Joel Lehtonen has constructed an imaginary environment that is at once one of the most disturbing and one of the most original landscapes to be found in the Finnish literature of the last century: the suburb of Krokelby. This deformed landscape, neither city nor countryside, is composed of disconcerting natural elements and crooked houses, and inhabited by grotesque characters. This article analyses the ways in which the literary landscape of Krokelby constitutes a radical inversion of more traditional images of Finnish symbolic landscapes, such as the national-romantic lake district of Eastern Finland, and the complex images of turn-of-the-century Helsinki. In Lehtonen’s novels, we find a carnivalisation of the proud and pure expanses of Karelia: a degenerate wasteland, filled with derelict houses; a Dante-esque scatological nightmare. The satirical and pessimistic way in which Lehtonen describes these suburban surroundings is prototypical for the direction in which literary descriptions of Helsinki and its suburbs were gradually evolving from the 1920s onwards: towards an ever more generic city, an in-between landscape of uprooted countryside and deformed cityscape. These descriptions foreshadow later representations of what arguably has become the most influential symbolic landscape in modern Finnish movies and literature: the suburbs. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Ameel, Lieven |
author_facet |
Ameel, Lieven |
author_sort |
Ameel, Lieven |
title |
Crippled City : Joel Lehtonen’s Krokelby as a Radical Inversion of Finnish National Romantic Landscapes |
title_short |
Crippled City : Joel Lehtonen’s Krokelby as a Radical Inversion of Finnish National Romantic Landscapes |
title_full |
Crippled City : Joel Lehtonen’s Krokelby as a Radical Inversion of Finnish National Romantic Landscapes |
title_fullStr |
Crippled City : Joel Lehtonen’s Krokelby as a Radical Inversion of Finnish National Romantic Landscapes |
title_full_unstemmed |
Crippled City : Joel Lehtonen’s Krokelby as a Radical Inversion of Finnish National Romantic Landscapes |
title_sort |
crippled city : joel lehtonen’s krokelby as a radical inversion of finnish national romantic landscapes |
publisher |
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies |
publishDate |
2013 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10138/38604 |
genre |
karelia* |
genre_facet |
karelia* |
op_relation |
978-952-10-8578-9 Language, Space and Power : Urban Entanglements COLLeGIUM: Studies across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences 13 1796-2986 918 http://hdl.handle.net/10138/38604 |
op_rights |
openAccess © author(s) & Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies |
_version_ |
1780735782998245376 |