Vilda pojkar, värde och varaktighet

Litterärt värde och värdering i fallen Sigfrid Siwertz Mälarpirater och Marjorie Rawlings The Yearling

Abstract

“Wild Boys, Value, and Longevity. Literary Value and Valuation in the Cases Mälarpirater by Sigfrid Siwertz and The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings”

The valuation of literature, authorships, and individual texts ripples through time and space like waves. This pilot study which initiates a more extensive project on value considers Mälarpirater by Sigfrid Siwertz (1911) and The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings (1938) and traces the literary valuation of these award-winning texts, usually seen as classic youth novels about wild boys. The authors were at approximately the same stage of their authorial life cycles at the time of publication, and both have been subject to major renegotiations in terms of value, but they are worlds apart when it comes to rhetorical position and style. The article draws up an inventory of the actors and value-creating acts in the valuation process, and discusses similarities and differences between two works that belong to such divergent contexts as the Swedish and the American literary arenas.

Conceptually, our readings draw on ideas from Pierre Bourdieu and Raymond Williams and operationalise a combination of these in relation to literary value. In the comparative analysis, we apply categories of value from previous Swedish literary research: style and form, knowledge, emotional, social, and economic values. The life cycles of the two authorships provide numerous examples of grounds for upward valuation and devaluation. The classification of Mälarpirater and The Yearling as youth novels, not least based on paratextual aspects, proves to be significant. Both Siwertz and Rawlings are more or less forgotten as authors today, but these works survived much longer than the authorships themselves.