Appreciations may switch: me country can be valued because of a presumed continuity, authenticity and harmony between man and nature, as opposed to die city, linked to existential and cultural alienation6 or the country may appear as backward, limited and stifling, the city being die place of development, individual liberation and growdi.

What values can be read into diese works: are they an apology of die local versus me global, expressing a nostalgic appetite for images of die past? Or do tiiey, more critically, interrogate die position of die modern intellectual as someone speaking from a specific place?4 Throughout the centuries the opposition between town and countryside has been beset with ideological meaning.5 The city is usually associated wim change, modernity, cosmopolitanism, and Gesellschaft, whereas die country is linked to tradition, ethnic homogeneity, closedness, and the organic Gemeinschaft. This is a typical border region, which swapped owners many times, belonging in turn to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the Italians, me Yugoslavs, men the Italians again, in die last 200 years only.

Magris, author of various fictional and essayistic works, became widely famous witii his fresco in Danubio of die cultures of Mittel-Europa concentrated around me Danube.3 Microcosmi appears as die small-scale complement to mat macroscopic work, as it depicts people, life and nature in die provincial town of Trieste (Northern Italy) and its region, from the lagoon to the woods of me mount Nevoso. In Miette he documents the silent revolution which has destroyed in Europe an age-old rural way of life.2 This 'novel' bears witness to the struggle for survival of one family of peasants in the isolated Limousin mountains in central France, grouped around the archetypal figure of the mother, Miette. Writing the Local in Times of Globalisation: Pierre Bergounioux and Claudio Magris Liesbeth Korthals Altes THIS ESSAY WILL FOCUS on two instances of (semi-)fiction which foreground a natural and rural setting: Miette (1995) by Pierre Bergounioux and Microcosmi (1997) by Claudio Magris.1 Bergounioux published over 20 'novels' and essays, well received by literary critics in France but read by a limited audience. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Claudio magris danube pdf