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- Ulfgard, Maria
(författare)
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För att bli kvinna - och av lust : en studie i tonårsflickors läsning
- 2002
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As part of the development of the teaching of literature in school, it is also important to reflect upon what pupils read outside school. This thesis deals with the spare time reading of twenty 15-16-year-old girls which has been examined during a two-year period. Empirical material related to young girls’ reading is examined in a variety of scholarly methods. Young girls’ reading is studied in the light of reception theory; novels are analysed by means of narratology; young girls’ lives are charted from perspectives drawn from cultural sociology and social psychology; finally, all aspects of the empirical material are tested by means of theories derived from gender studies. For the purposes of the thesis the initial question has been broken down into three segments: To what extent the girls actually engage in reading in their spare time, what they read, and what importance they attach to their reading. Another aim, which focusses attention on the connection between the girls’ lives and their reading, has been to find out to what extent the girls’ choice of literature is determined by geographical, social, cultural, and religious factors and by the teaching of literature at school. The third aim has been to find out how gender is constructed in the books that the girls choose to read, how they construct gender while reading these books, and how they construct gender in their own lives. The results of the study suggest that pleasure is a strong factor governing the girls’ reading and that there is a strong connection between the girls’ construction of their identity, including the formation of gender, and their choice of literature and the development of their reading. The study shows that the fiction chosen by the girls themselves mirrors their lives and that the social, cultural and religious factors have an influence on their reading. The relevance of the results of the thesis to the teaching of literature in Swedish schools is discussed. A dialogue is initiated with Läroplanens värdegrund, Lpo 94 and with Kursplan 2000, the Swedish syllabus currently used.
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| 2. |
- Nordlund, Anna, 1966-
(författare)
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Selma Lagerlöfs underbara resa genom den svenska litteraturhistorien 1891–1996
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) is generally considered one of Sweden’s few world renowned and undisputed canonical novelists. Despite her fame and success, however, Selma Lagerlöf’s status as an important artist within the literary canon has always been problematic. This dissertation examines how literary critics initially received Selma Lagerlöf ’s literary corpus and how her corpus has been subsequently treated in Swedish literary criticism and literary histories of the twentieth century. When Lagerlöf made her literary debut with the novel Gösta Berlings saga in 1891 she helped pioneer a new symbolist, anti-realist direction in Swedish literature, known as ”nittitalismen” (the 1890s' movement). The first part of the dissertation shows how the literary establishment of her time constructed Lagerlöf ’s reputation as that of a passive re-teller, and moreover, a re-teller of considerably less radically charged material than that found in the portrayal of women’s life experiences in the novels and dramas of the preceding decade. She was made into an innate storyteller of legends and tales. In the second part of the dissertation scholarly studies of Selma Lagerlöf ’s work are explored together with surveys in literary histories. In the 1950s the first wave of Lagerlöf scholars set out to show that Selma Lagerlöf was a modern writer, fully aware of her artistry and concerned with contemporary matters. In the 1980s a new era of Lagerlöf scholarship dawned. It focused its critical attention on Lagerlöf ’s textual modernity and slowly displaced traditional positivism with hermeneutics and semiotics. In the last chapter of the dissertation surveys of male authors August Strindberg and Verner von Heidenstam are compared with surveys of Lagerlöf in literary histories. The quantitative and qualitative results are much to Strindberg’s and Heidenstam’s advantage. Strindberg remains an overwhelmingly dominant figure in Swedish literary histories. An internationally less prominent author such as Verner von Heidenstam is revered as the precursor and leader of the important 1890s’ movement in Swedish literature. Lagerlöf remains mostly framed as the great storyteller of the 1890s, despite all the academic criticism that has evolved around Lagerlöf in the latter part of the last century, showing Lagerlöf as a highly independent, original and influential artist. One conclusion that can be drawn from this dissertation is that the context of the traditional literary history needs opening up. One possibility would be to include more of the general public’s perspective and thus place more focus on the reception history of literature. Such a historiography would primarily account for how aesthetic qualities in a literary oeuvre have been used and received rather than emphasize how these aesthetic qualities fit into the traditional literary and philosophical contexts. Arguably, such a historiography would stand a better chance to do full justice to successful female authors.
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