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- Hultsberg, Peter, 1951-
(författare)
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Därför berör oss fåglarnas liv : Lennart Sjögrens poetiska livsförståelse
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation examines Lennart Sjögren’s conception of life as revealed through his poetry and other written documents. Light is shed on his writings in three chapters, with an Introduction that opens the investigations, and a Conclusion that sums up the findings. His collection of poetry Ur männisovärlden (2008, From the world of the living) is commented upon in an epilogue. Chapter Two analyses the collection Havet (1974, The Sea), focussing on Sjögren’s view of nature and his imagery. A religious tone can be apparent throughout the poems. In earlier centuries, poems about migratory birds often gained in authenticity via their Christian context. In a secularised age, ecological insights add to the credibility of the poems. Chapter Three is an analysis and interpretation of Sjögren’s collection of poems Fågeljägarna (1997, The Bird Catchers), as well as of the intra- and intertexts that the reader meets in his writings and that, for various reasons, serve to make Sjögren’s poetic voice so distinctive. In a series of subsections the uniqueness of Fågeljägarna is defined by means of a comparison with ecology, secularisation (secularism), nihilism, religion and mythology. In addition, there is a discussion of the “poetry of place” and a final analysis of what unites and divides Sjögren and K. E. Løgstrup, regarding a poetic understanding of life. Independent of the ideological direction that is identi-fied, this cycle of poems is marked by an elegiac mood. The poem “Dagen före plöjarens kväll” (1984, “The Day before the Plough-man’s Evening”) from the eponymous collection of poems is an example of an ekphrasis (a transformation of images). Chapter Four makes a close reading of this poem, for which Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s picture “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” is a model. Four interpretative hypotheses are advanced: a moral, ontological, theological and a folkloristic one. The interpretation of the poem points out that the dialogue is not merely the poet’s private affair – the reader is also invited to take an active part in the discussion, now with the picture and the ekphrasis as prerequisites. The chapter contains a further three analyses of ekphrasis dealing with other poems from the collection Dagen före plöjarens kväll.
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| 2. |
- Höglund, Anna, 1970-
(författare)
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Vampyrer : En kulturkritisk studie av den västerländska vampyrberättelsen från 1700-talet till 2000-talet
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Vampires haunt our culture. They live amongst us, they live with us, and very likely, they live for us. Considering the never fading popularity of vampires, it is obvious that these beings satisfy some kind of basic human need. Why are vampires so popular? What kinds of specific characteristics do vampires possess that lead to our never-ending fascination with them? These are questions that are answered in this dissertation, which deals with the vampire narrative’s most significant transformations during the period 1700-2000. This study reveals that the vampire is a monster that allows both identification and distance, which makes it into an appropriate character for people to use when they tell stories about themselves and the surrounding world. This is reflected in vampire narratives. The nature of vampires and the material of vampire narratives are not something that has undergone random changes in the course of history. These transformations have their origins in various societal and cultural processes. Through studying the historical and cultural contexts that have produced vampire narratives, one can understand why vampires have been portrayed in different ways at different times and places. Similarly, studying the vampire narrative can also be used to understand the history and culture in which the narrative was created. An examination of the vampire narrative’s history from a cultural criticism perspective reveals a distinct pattern. The vampire narrative has always attracted most attention in times of social and cultural unrest. In all of the varying contexts where vampire characters appear throughout a story, a power game is occurring – a game where the vampire’s character is strategically used to express political opinions and strengthen ideological beliefs. The constant appearance of vampires in such power games is a distinctive feature within the history of vampire narratives, and the societal turbulence leaves its impression on the vampire narrative. These impressions are analyzed and interpreted in this dissertation in order to reveal the power and the strategies of power within the discourse in which the narrative has been produced. In order to describe how the vampire character has functioned and continues to function in what the study calls conflicts of power relations, the term and phenomena power improvisation is used. In the description of the history of the vampire narrative, one can discern two important sub-processes. The first describes how the vampire character and narrative have been fashioned into what they are today. During the period of interest, the vampire is transformed from the un-dead of folklore to an attractive nobleman and further into to a Count Dracula, in order to simultaneously be portrayed as what this study terms a human vampire. The second sub-process explains why the vampire character and narrative have been fashioned into what they are today. It describes the political and ideological beliefs which exist in the society where the vampire form is created and which give birth to different kinds of vampires. If, in the past, the vampire was a monster that was used to portray that which humans are afraid of, today it is a monster with which humans identify. This, claims the author, is due to the fact that the age in which we live is to a great extent imbued with the logic of consumer culture. People in a consumer culture live lives filled with demands which influence their self-image. Feelings of inadequacy and isolation are typical. For people of today, the vampire is an ally that offers an alternative and meets those needs that are neglected in a consumer society.
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| 3. |
- Nilsson Skåve, Åsa, 1970-
(författare)
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Den befriade sången : Stina Aronsons berättarkonst
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Den befriade sången. Stina Aronsons berättarkonst Liberated song. Stina Aronson’s narrative art Abstract This thesis discusses the narrative art of the Swedish author Stina Aronson (1892-1956) with special emphasis on Hitom himlen (“This Side of Heaven”) from 1946. This work forms the subject of the first part, with formal aspects like narrator construction, composition and genre as the starting-point. These aspects, and the originality with which they are treated by Aronson, are put in relation to modernist æstheticism. In the next step the modernist approach is linked to a discussion of modernity. The basis of this thematic analysis consists of entities like language, time, faith and individuality, all of which play an important part in Aronson’s writing. The thematization of individual freedom versus determinism makes the work a counterpart to existentialism, the current philosophy of the time. What becomes especially apparent is a striking ambivalence towards modernity, but also towards a more traditional, almost pre-modern, attitude to life prevailing in the severe Læstadianist village community described. This interpretation deviates from the idea of pure civilization criticism and of the near idealization of the world described, which has dominated earlier analyses of the Aronson’s work. Gender issues, too, play an important part in the thesis, especially in the section analyzing the main characters and the attitudes they represent. The two central characters of the text are women and they are fundamentally different. The criticism of the village community and the destructive effects on the individual of the austere faith is most evident in the portrait of Mira, one of the women. She emerges as a more modern character than the others, driven by an urge to break free and make her own destiny, a project which, however, fails completely. There are several reasons for this, but the decisive factor is that as a woman she is more strictly bound by conventions and norms in the surrounding environment and interpretative community. Part II discusses the author’s other works published in book form. The textual forms and their possible relation to modernism are discussed to some extent, but above all the same issues concerning modernity and gender are tested as outlined in the first part. Ambivalence vis-à-vis the modern is also noticeable in the early works, albeit in a less sophisticated way. The problematization of gender roles is a marginal but essential element in these works, most evident in those produced around 1930 and gradually becoming more and more complex. What is striking is the recurrent existence of gender-transcending characters. Aronson’s characters are depicted over and over again as untypical of their sex, which altogether conveys the image of a world where there is something fundamentally wrong with expectations. In the collected works of Aronson these themes remained constant throughout the great variation in genre, form and contents ever since the début in 1921 to her last work in 1952: opposition against all forms of normalizing categories prescribing how people should believe, communicate, experience time and function as man or woman.
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