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- Askander, Mikael
(författare)
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Modernitet och intermedialitet i Erik Asklunds tidiga romankonst
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Modernitet och intermedialitet is the first major study of the Swedish modernist writer Erik Asklund (1908-1980) and his works. The thesis consists of an introductory chapter and three close readings of Asklund’s early novels Kvinnan är stor (The Woman is Great, 1931), Lilla land (A Small Country, 1933), and Fanfar med fem trumpeter (A Fanfare with Five Trumpets, 1934). In these novels, Asklund depicts modernity in Sweden in the 1930’s. Exploring the modernity of the 1930’s in Asklund’s novels, especially the contemporary media situation turns out to be one of the most important aspects. Asklund wrote stories about film, music and various forms of visual culture, (photography, for instance). These different forms of art and media play an important role for Asklund’s writings, not only thematically, but also narationally. In my analyses, I put forward different theoretical aspects of intermediality. In this context, the ideas of Werner Wolf have been especially useful to my examinations of the intermedial aspects in Asklund’s works. In the novel Kvinnan är stor, Asklund tells the story about the young woman Lydia, who moves from the countryside to the big city of Stockholm. She then learns to decode the modern urban society, and becomes a modern woman. In Kvinnan är stor, intermediality is expressed mainly through various connections to film and photography. The modernization of Sweden in the early 20th century was much a question of the countryside becoming modern. In Lilla land, Asklund depicts this process. The novel is one of the first works ever focusing the forming of the Swedish welfare state project. The story is told in a cinematic or filmical way. The third novel to be analysed in the thesis is Fanfar med fem trumpeter. This is one of the first Swedish jazz novels. Asklund tells the story about five young unemployed men in Stockholm who form a jazz orchestra, and make a career. The novels characters experience everyday life as “medialized”; they compare reality with music, film, and photography. These novels, as well as all Asklund’s writings from the 1930’s, are important contributions to the “story about Sweden becoming a modern country”. This “story” consists of the novels, short stories and poems written in the early decades of the 20th century in Sweden.
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| 2. |
- Ekman, Kari Haarder, 1964-
(författare)
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"Mitt hems gränser vidgades" : En studie i den kulturella skandinavismen under 1800-talet
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation investigates the cultural side of the very large movement that was Scandinavism. In Norway, Sweden, and Denmark Scandinavism fostered a great interest in the language and literature of the neighbouring countries. This interest emerged at the start of the nineteenth century, marking an about-turn after centuries of war. In six chapters the dissertation shows first how people at the start of the century studied the same kinds of Old Norse texts, which brought insight into shared roots and the fact that the languages had once been the same. Later, in the period 1843–1850, Scandinavism took on a political orientation. This is the orientation that has hitherto been in focus, particularly in historical research. It was, however, a short-lived movement that finally died out in 1864. Cultural Scandinavism, on the other hand, was on a much greater scale and was to be significant for very many authors, as the dissertation shows. C. J. L. Almqvist, H. C. Andersen, Fredrika Bremer, and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson are examples of authors who related in different ways to Scandinavism. All three wrote texts expressing Scandinavistic ideas, and their literary texts, letters, and speeches are examined here. As a way to systematize the elements of Scandinavism, the term “markers of Scandinavism” is used. These are also found, finally, in Georg Brandes, who was highly significant from the 1880s onwards as a critic throughout Scandinavia, not just in Denmark. The dissertation shows that Scandinavist ideas were instrumental in the spread of “the modern breakthrough” to the whole of Scandinavia. The sense of community that emerged helped to create a common “literary space”, to use an expression coined by Pascale Casanova, which the authors of the 1880s were able to exploit. The aims and ideas of cultural Scandinavism became generally accepted and are still significant. Finally, it is observed that many institutions for cultural cooperation today use exactly the same arguments for collaboration as were used in the nineteenth century.
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| 3. |
- Mälhammar, Åsa, 1968-
(författare)
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En svensk harlekinad : Narren som litterärt motiv hos Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Hjalmar Bergman och Lars Forssell
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The subject of the thesis emerges out of curiosity as to how something which is essentially theatrical is transferred to a literary form of expression. Against this background the fool has been chosen as a potentially theatrical figure. The study of the fool as a motif in Swedish literature is carried out by means of close examination of Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s novel Drottningens juvelsmycke (The Queen’s Tiara, 1834), Hjalmar Bergman’s novel Clownen Jac (Jac the Clown, 1930) and Lars Forssell’s collection of poems Narren (The Fool, 1952). In chapter 2, 3 and 4 these authors’ representations of the motif are analyzed, in continual dialogue with other representations of the fool in literary history. As a result of the examinations certain rhetorical devices, such as what I call negative characterization, are highlighted, as well as stylistic and narrative features that can be derived from the literary adaptation of the figure. It appears for instance as if the fool, whose main communicative resources are symbolic and mimic, i. e. visual and momentary, provides a challenge to conventional methods of linear epic narration. The thesis also deals with the problem of illusion vs. reality, mask vs. face etcetera, which is something that underlies the authors’ philosophical and aesthetical interest in the motif. In the Introduction and chapter 1 a secondary purpose of the thesis is stated: an attempt to create a definition of the fool, the literarily conceived fool in particular. The definition is based on five criteria, masquerade, comedy, exclusion, transcendence and discharge (or freedom) from liability, all of which are suggested to identify the fool. The chosen examples of the motif are all tested against these criteria, which provide the analyses with a structural and thematic coherence. The definition also aims at a better framing of the modern, secularized idea of the fool, a framing which synthetically comprehends the motif’s christian conception as well as it’s origins in the theatrical traditions of comedy.
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