Abstract

Back in 2008, when I was still in the process of writing my PhD thesis on René Girard's mimetic theory and its applications to the narrative poetics of certain post-1960 Anglophone novels, I was struck by an interesting and perhaps inevitable geographical phenomenon. I had just been admitted to a European doctoral program that was centered in a German university but that included also other institutions, both north and south of our Central European headquarters. The "Northern" dimension was represented by Sweden and my native Finland, whereas our "Southern" counterpart sent emissaries from Italy and Portugal. It did not take many sessions in our Pan-European research seminars for me to realize how valuable a...