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- Höglund, Anna, 1970-
(author)
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Vampyrer : En kulturkritisk studie av den västerländska vampyrberättelsen från 1700-talet till 2000-talet
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)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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| 2. |
- Hermansson, Joakim, 1964-
(author)
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Adapting Adulthood : Migrating Characters and Themesfrom Novels, Screenplays, and Films
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- When novels are adapted for the screen, the fictional characters are inevitablytransformed in the adaptation process, and so is the thematic content. This studyconsiders the characters and the thematic content of a story as migrants who leavethe land of the novel in order to adapt to a life on the screen with transformed selfidentities.The five articles that this thesis is based on focus on what happens to therepresentation of adulthood when novels are adapted for the screen. The articles testmodels for analysing thematic representation using popular works of fiction such asAtonement, Fifty Shades of Grey, Gone Girl, Me before You, Room, Shutter Island, The DaVinci Code, The Martian, The Road, Up in the Air, and novels by Patrick McCabe.Because novel-screenplay-film adaptations comprise alternative versions of astory, with their complementary lines of reasoning, they constitute particularly richthematic representations and metaphors for what social adaptation requires. In thatcontext, the thesis regards novel-screenplay-film adaptations as processes and objectsat the same time, each version an integral part of a greater dynamic whole.Relating to current theories of the attraction of fiction, chapter 1 presents theaim of the study. Chapter 2 describes the novel-screenplay-film adaptation processas a non-linear, two-way process of adaptation and appropriation, and a receptionbasedmodel for regarded adapted characters as fictional migrants. Chapter 3outlines a pragmatic model, with the hero’s journey as a foundation, to analyse thestructure of thematic lines of reasoning in fiction in general and adaptations inspecific, together with thematic markers. The chapter also presents the markers ofadulthood used in the articles, before chapter 4 and 5 summarise and discuss the fivearticles and implications related to adaptation studies, pedagogy, and screenwriting.
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| 3. |
- Wijkmark, Sofia, 1974-
(author)
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Hemsökelser : Gotiken i sex berättelser av Selma Lagerlöf
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The topic of this thesis is the gothic fiction of Selma Lagerlöf. Its primary purpose is to investigate how Lagerlöf's work can be understood in relation to the gothic genre; what particular themes, motifs and formal aspects appear when making this connection and how they can be interpreted, as well as which literary and cultural contexts become relevant. The study is based on close readings of six short stories that, in comparison, appear to be some of the most gloomy and horrific in her production: "Karln. En julsägen" (1891), "De fågelfrie", "Stenkumlet", "Riddardottern och havsmannen" (1892), "Spökhanden" (1898) and "Frid på jorden" (1917). The gothic was an important feature of the literature of the last decade of the nineteenth century, when Lagerlöf made her debut. Therefore one of the main purposes of this study is to highlight her as one of the key writers of gothic fiction in Sweden by the time. In this context the gothic might be considered as closely related to the currents of decadence and fin-de-siècle. However, the gothic continued to be an important element throughout Lagerlöf's production, and this is illustrated by the inclusion of a story from a later period among the primary sources. The gothic genre can be defined by certain themes and motifs, but also by its narrative strategies. The analyses of the six stories show how themes and composition are used to create an atmosphere of fear and darkness, but also, more importantly, to create a sense of ambiguity. The study also discusses the relationship between the gothic and the fantastic and special attention is paid to aspects such as the hesitation concerning how to interpret the supernatural, as well as the fragmentary bodies and psyches of the stories. The main themes of the six stories can be summarized as dealing with the haunting and return of the past, as well as the fear associated with the transgression of limits - between fantasy and reality, the civilized and the primitive, life and death and self and other. Central to the argument in this study is das Unheimliche - the uncanny - a concept that links a certain kind of fear to uncertainty, doubles, ghostliness and haunting. Sigmund Freud has described it as a paradox, as something terrifyingly strange and yet familiar at the same time. The gothic reproduces the experience of reality expressed by this concept - a sense that the self is the source of horror and that identity is something highly unstable.
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