Introduction

[Urpo Kovala]

Hello,
I am a postgraduate student in literary studies at the university of Jyvaskyla, Finland. In the recent years, I have been involved and working at the interdisciplinary "Research Unit for Contemporary Culture" at the same university. Present position? None, till next autumn, when I'll be working at the above unit for some time again. The topic of my dissertation which is underway is the
consequences of contextualism for literary studies. I have also been doing and participating in studies on the reception of literature. My other areas of interest include stylistics and literary pragmatics; the eighteent-century English
nove (especially Sterne); cultural studies; and critical discourse analysis, which I have applied in some analyses of reception data.

Urpo Kovala
University of Jyvaskyla