Hanna Meretoja

Hanna Meretoja is a Finnish literary scholar and narrative theorist. She is professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Turku.

Education and career

In 2001, Meretoja received her M.A. from the University of Turku, where she studied comparative literature as her major and philosophy, art history, cultural history and communications as her minors. In 2010, she completed her Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of Turku. The title of her thesis is The French Narrative Turn: From the Problematization of Narrative Subjectivity in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Dans le labyrinthe to its Hermeneutic Rehabilitation in Michel Tournier’s Le Roi des Aulnes. Meretoja was a visiting scholar at the University of Tübingen in 2002–2003, Sorbonne Nouvelle in 2004 and Uppsala University in 2008, as well as a visiting professor at the American University of Paris in 2013–2014. In 2014-2015, she was the first director of the research centre Narrare: Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies at the University of Tampere.[1]

Work

Meretoja has contributed mainly to the fields of narrative theory, narrative hermeneutics and narrative ethics. Her areas of expertise also include the interrelations between literature, philosophy and history; literary and critical theory; cultural memory studies; trauma studies; philosophical hermeneutics; the intersections of ethics and aesthetics; 20th and 21st century narrative fiction in French, German and English; the socio-critical dimension of literature; and the study of subjectivity, identity and experientiality.

Books in English

  • The Narrative Turn in Fiction and Theory: The Crisis and Return of Storytelling from Robbe-Grillet to Tournier. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)[2]
  • Values of Literature. (Brill, 2015, co-edited with Saija Isomaa, Pirjo Lyytikäinen & Kristina Malmio)[3]
  • The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History, and the Possible. (Oxford University Press, 2018)[4]
  • Storytelling and Ethics: Literature, Visual Arts and the Power of Narrative. (Routledge, 2018, co-edited with Colin Davis)[5]
  • Sen, Amartya; Räikkä, Juha; Meretoja, Hanna (2000). Luentoja etiikasta ja taloustieteestä (in Finnish). ISBN 978-951-579-107-8.

Honors and awards

In 2018, Meretoja received the Early Career Award of the Narrative Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.[6] She was inducted into the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2023.[7]

References

  1. ^ "Hanna Meretoja | University of Turku". www.utu.fi. Retrieved 2025-04-11.
  2. ^ Reviews of The Narrative Turn in Fiction and Theory
  3. ^ Review of Values of Literature
    • Ponnou-Delaffon, Erin Tremblay (2017): "Values of Literature ed. by Hanna Meretoja et. al. (review)." French Studies: A Quarterly Review: Vol. 71: Iss. 1, 2017, pp. 159-160.
  4. ^ Review of The Ethics of Storytelling
  5. ^ Review of Storytelling and Ethics
  6. ^ "New publication helps us understand how narratives expand our sense of the possible". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2025-04-11.
  7. ^ "Nye medlemmer innvalgt i Akademiet" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. 17 March 2023. Retrieved 28 August 2024.