FROM NORTHERN EXOTISM TO CONDEMNATION TO HEAVEN: CULTURAL TRANSLATION AND LITERARY REPRESENTATION OF THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES IN THE LOCAL SERBIAN CONTEXT

Abstract

The largely positive hetero-image of the Scandinavian region reverberates both world-wide and in the local Serbian context. Therefore, the main subject of this paper is how media-bound literary representations of Scandinavia travel from the original Scandinavian to the local Serbian cultural context, i.e. what kind of image of Scandinavia is conveyed and received through the recent translations of Scandinavian literary texts into Serbian. For that reason, the paper introduces the notions of Northern Exotism and Condemnation to Heaven as two dominant ways the Scandinavian region is presented in fictional texts. The paper is based on the categorical apparatus of theories of cultural translation. Cultural translation is not concerned with the linguistic transfer of units, but with the transfer, transformation, and translation of a historical subject from one political and cultural state into another. The paper therefore relies on the thematic analysis of a selection of Norwegian authors who have been recently translated into Serbian.