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- Alexandersson, Pär, 1963-
(author)
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Konsten att avstå : Framställningar av åldrande och visdom i västeuropeisk litteratur från Cicero till Fredrika Bremer
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study discusses the tradition of ideal ageing, which emphasizes life-long virtue as an avenue to wisdom. In line with this tradition the senior members of society have been expected to take charge of and to organize their withdrawal from their social engagements, make themselves available to the younger generations needs without (openly) wanting to control them, and impart traditions without insisting that everything remain unchanged. Women have not been excluded from this tradition, but they have figured more in the margin. This is especially noticeable in the popular image of the ideal ageing man as a king in command of himself (but only in exceptional cases also in command of others). The tradition of ideal ageing emerged during antiquity. Socrates held a central position in the formation of this set of values, Cicero’s De Senectute is a prototype of positive examples of ideal ageing, and Seneca’s texts on old age became, at the time, a model for how deterrent examples function as warnings to others. Traces of this tradition can, for example, be found in Shakespeare’s King Lear, and in texts by and about the ageing Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In the beginning of the 19th century, the tradition of ideal ageing in Swedish literature dominated the portrayals of the relationship between young and old, especially in texts by Esaias Tegnér, Erik Gustaf Geijer, and Fredrika Bremer, who all wrote at a time when a new national ideology was emerging. Some of these writers though did attempt to break with the tradition by portraying themselves in old age as passionate and perpetually young. This shows the importance of studying how individual writers, instead of regarding the tradition of ideal ageing only as a limiting norm or discourse, have used the tradition in accordance with their own interests and perspectives.
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| 2. |
- Wallheim, Henrik, 1978-
(author)
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En underbar berättelse om ridderliga äventyr : V.F. Palmblad och den romantiska romanen
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Vilhelm Fredrik Palmblad (1788–1852) was one of the leading men of the Romantic circle in Uppsala, known as the “New school” or the “fosforists”. Among the men in this group, Palmblad was the one devoting most attention to the novel, and he broke sharply with the dominating negative view of the genre. This thesis examines Palmblad’s conception of the novel genre, using his critical writings as well as his own novels.Palmblad holds that the novel originates from the chivalrous romances of the Middle Ages. Like these romances, the novel is, and should be, a “wonderful story”, dealing with adventures and heroic deeds in service of God and womanhood. It is of decisive importance that the novel is elevated from mundane life: the stature of the characters and the story are crucial criteria of value. Palmblad also emphasizes the importance of portraying characters and their circumstances in an individualized way.Influenced in particular by Walter Scott, Palmblad gradually opens his conception of the novel towards depictions of everyday life. However, this opening is surrounded by restrictions showing that Palmblad still adheres to his Romantic aesthetics. The study challenges the previous understanding of Palmblad’s development from Romantic to Realist. Instead, the shifts of his aesthetics towards a stronger connection with reality ought to be understood as endeavours to preserve the ideals of the Romantic novel at a time when they were contested.From a wider horizon, the study also questions the prevalent understanding of the transition from the Romantic to the realistic novel. The aesthetic contrast between “Romanticism” and “Realism” ought to be played down. The truly important opposition among the Swedish novelists of the time is rather a political conflict between conservatives and liberals.
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| 3. |
- Andersson, Daniel, 1975-
(author)
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The Nothing That Is : The Structure of Consciousness in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens
- 2006
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This is a study of the poetry of the American writer Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). Stevens’ poetry is often concerned with the relation between consciousness and world, the perceiver and the perceived. This dissertation takes the investigation of the very “structure” or “pattern” of consciousness as its main purpose. Influenced by the theoretical implications of thematic criticism, this dissertation regards Stevens’ collected works as a unified whole or as an imaginary universe in which the manifestation of consciousness and world is connected to the poetic utterance itself. In short, Stevens’ oeuvre provides a poetic world in which a cogito is inscribed, a cogito which offers itself to be manifested through the interpretative act as an independent ontological category. This cogito is upheld and ordered by a specific thematic structure which permeates Stevens’ entire imaginary universe. It is the fundamental aim of this dissertation to convey this thematic pattern, a pattern that is divided in three distinct yet closely interrelated aesthetic categories: the descent, nothingness, and the ascent. Supported by phenomenology and existentialism in general, and the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre in particular, this study offers “thematic close readings” of representative poems which all are argued to convey this thematic pattern in their own individual way.Chapter I offers a survey of Stevens criticism and it ends with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological perspective of the present investigation. Chapter II, III, and IV correspond respectively to the three thematic divisions, and the study is brought to a closure in a Postscript that is framed by the poem “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.” Each chapter is in large chronologically arranged and attempts to show how each individual theme is manifested throughout Stevens’ oeuvre, and also in what way the different parts of the general thematic pattern interrelate.
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| 4. |
- Cullhed, Anna, 1966-
(author)
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The language of passion : the order of poetics and the construction of a lyric genre 1746-1806
- 2001
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The subject of this dissertation is the construction of a lyric genre in academic poetics between 1746 and 1806, in handbooks and lectures by Ch. Batteux, J. A. Schlegel, J. G. Sulzer, H. Blair, J. J. Eschenburg, J. J. Engel, A. W. Schlegel, F. W. J. Schelling, F. Ast, and F. Bouterwek. The study also aims at a reconsideration of neoclassical versus romantic poetics. The first chapter investigates the relation between tradition and discourse. It argues that poetics as a discipline relies on an ancient legacy and on contemporary legitimising discourses, such as the natural sciences, moral philosophy, or idealist philosophy. The two levels indicate sites of interplay between continuity and change. The second chapter discusses the concept of genre. It is established that the lyric genre is not dependent on a triadic system of genres. All sources provide generic enumerations, even though they represent different approaches to systematic closure. The lyric genre consists of a classical canon paired with a more changeable set of contemporary lyrics. The lyric genre is defined as the language of passion in all sources and is connected with brevity, enthusiasm, metrical freedom, and disorder. In the third chapter lyrical expression is related to concepts such as imitation, authenticity, original poetry, and religious poetry. The lyric genre vacillates between the expression of universal and individual feelings. It is argued that the identification of lyric poetry as expression does not entail that the emotions in question are to be understood as authentic.
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| 6. |
- Viklund, Jon, 1973-
(author)
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Ett vidunder i sitt sekel : Retoriska studier i C.J.L. Almqvists kritiska prosa 1815-1851
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The subject of this dissertation is Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s critical prose and the status of rhetoric in 19th-century Sweden. Almqvist (1793–1866) was a leading author in Sweden during the first half of the 19th century, a controversial writer of fiction as well as argumentative essays. He was a prominent author of manifestos in the early Romantic period, a textbook author in the 1830s and a journalist in the liberal press of the 1840s. Throughout his career didactic and rhetorical objectives formed an essential part of his work. He aspired to reform the educational system, the church, the state and society’s moral standards in general. At the same time, programmatic intention was problematic to him, and his critical oeuvre is marked by ambivalence toward polemics and social commitment. A major theme in Almqvist’s works relates to the need for rhetorical language, on the one hand, and the resistance to persuasion, on the other. All through his work there is a dream of pure communication and a language of the heart. As a consequence of these views, Almqvist’s texts display a constant struggle with his authorial role.The dissertation examines the rhetorical preconditions for, and the linguistic means of expression in, Almqvist’s critical prose. The first and the last chapters place Almqvist’s works in a historical and medial context. Chapter I shows how Almqvist’s conception of language and communication grows out of his involvement in several esoteric educational societies during 1815–1823. Chapter VI describes his attitudes towards the newspaper medium, and how the liberal press, by its specific rhetorical preconditions, affected his writing and his authorial role.In readings of some of Almqvist’s major treatises (Historiens idéer, Det nya strids-sättets idé, Svenska Fattigdomens betydelse, Om Poesi i Sak and Europeiska missnöjets grunder, Chapters II–VI), argumentation and stylistic strategies are examined as ways of establishing authority in the texts. The aim is to characterize some specific features in the author’s critical prose. Among other things, the dissertation discusses the notion of a “jargon of authenticity”, Almqvist’s strategies with rhetorical genres, the predominant dialectics in the texts, and the creating of effective rhetorical situations by way of fiction.
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