Christinna Hazzard, Semi-Peripheral Realism. Nation and Form on the Borders of Europe, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, 230 p.

Abstract

Christinna Hazzard’s 2024 study, Semi-Peripheral Realism: Nation and Form on the Borders of Europe, undertakes the ambitious task of navigating the shifting frontiers of world literature, aiming to chart its unexplored and neglected territories and provide—if not new, then at least renewed—insights and interest in the field. Focusing on the semi-periphery and drawing on the theoretical frameworks and methods of Fredric Jameson and Franco Moretti, Christinna Hazzard sets out to investigate the asynchronous development of global capitalism, seeking to demonstrate how this otherwise abstract “unevenness” (1) has taken concrete shape within–and has, in turn, reshaped–both literature and literary theory.