Framkallning : Skrift, konsumtion och sexualitet i Karin Boyes Astarte och Henry Parlands Sönder

• This thesis is a comparative study in two novels which both try to understand modern life. The novels were both written between 1929 and 1930 as entries for the same major Nordic novel contest – Astarte in Sweden by Karin Boye, Sönder [To Pieces ]in Finland by the Finno-swedish author Henry Parland.This analysis tries to determine what is at stake in these novels by, apart from investigating them as novels in their own right, examining the complex interaction between a specific moment in history and the representation of that moment as literary text. The novels are examined as events in a specific historical situation; that is, how they write what is contemporary into themselves, trough answering the question about the historical moment that they themselves formulate. Four issues are fundamental to the study: The function of consumption and the commodity form in the novels. The way in which these novels render sexuality and desire. How other media forms function as aesthetic technologies for the novels. Lastly, aesthetics, writing and allegory: how the novels reflect on the possibility of representing this societal moment in history.A focus in the analysis is how woman is called forth as golden statue and photography, how she by letting herself be consumed as sexual symbol elicits male speech – thereby also making the speaker into author, and man. The economic side to this is the way in which men and women take on the form of commodities amongst themselves. It is in this sexual economy that they become men and women. The transformation of the sexed object into the systematic status of a sign, signifying its value, implies the simultaneous transformation of human relations into consumer relations: You consume or get consumed.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature (hsv//eng)

Keyword

writing

commodity

consumption

media analysis

gender

sexuality

Karin Boye

Henry Parland

skrift

varuform

konsumtion

medier

genus

sexualitet

Karin Boye

Henry Parland

Literature

litteraturvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

dok (subject category)