Affekt og effekt

August Strindbergs sensoriske skriftpraksis i Inferno

Abstract

Affect and Effect. August Strindberg’s Sensory Practice of Writing in Inferno

The central argument of this essay, which combines phenomenological close reading with philological observation and cultural-historical contextualization, is that August Strindberg, in his autobiographical novel Inferno (1897), establishes a practice of writing, which articulates the sensory impressions of modernity. The goal of this practice is, firstly, to draw a portrait of the sentient subject and of contemporary culture, and, secondly, to demonstrate that the relationship between the two has a relativistic, not an absolute, character. The function of the practice, the essay argues, is to create an effect of sensory presence to the reader, which counteracts the contradictory genre implications of the novel. In an epistemological perspective, Strindberg’s sensory-aesthetic practice of writing demonstrates that language and sense perception are not necessarily opposed to each other. In a literary-historical perspective, it focuses our attention on the body, which has been neglected within modernist criticism.