Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap

Från redaktionen

2023-04-26T16:27:39+02:00

Redaktionens förord.

Fiskar skriker när de dör

2023-04-20T11:03:58+02:00

“Fish Scream When They Die. Corall Reefs as an Example of the Interplay Between Man and Nature in Three Texts by Ian Fleming”

The essay focuses on one aspect of Ian Fleming’s interest in nature and ecology: the interplay between man and nature in the novel Live and Let Die (1954), and in two short stories: ”The Hildebrand Rarity” (1960) and “Octopussy” (1962). All three texts have coral reefs at the centre of climactic scenes, in which Nature strikes back at evil and criminal individuals: the mobster Mr. Big uses a coral reef as an outré instrument of execution; he ends his life as leopard shark food when he falls into the sea at the reef. The gangster Milton Krest poisons an entire coral reef with thousands of fish just to catch one single specimen of an extremely rare fish, the Hildebrand Rarity; his murderer stuffs the Hildebrand Rarity into his mouth, and the spines of the dorsal and anal fins catch inside his cheeks, thus causing him to suffocate. The thief and murderer Dexter Smythe tries to kill a deadly scorpion fish, which he plans to feed to the cephalopod Octopussy. The fish pricks his skin with its poisonous fins. Before Smythe is paralysed, he is pulled down into the deep by Octopussy, thus dying two deaths.

At a time when research on popular literature in Sweden is scarce, and the combination ecocriticism/popular literature is clearly underexploited in Swedish literary criticism, it would seem urgent to show the possibilities of this research area.

Humorn i stadens mångstämmiga rum

2023-01-05T11:56:44+01:00

“Humour in the Polyphonic Town Space. A Reading of Hjalmar Bergman’s Novel The Markurells of Wadköping”

The novelist as an accomplished artist is revealed, in Mikhail Bakhtin’s view, when the stamp of his/her voice and style is kept while interacting and intermingling with other voices and styles expressed in the novel, often taken from social, collective spaces such as the town. In addition, Bakhtin observes that a history of laughter can be read in the development of the novel as a genre. With its popular roots in carnival traditions, the novel takes place in streets and market squares, and creates an alternative social place which can overturn given social, political and economic hierarchies. Furthermore, the literary scholar Leo Spitzer shows how a novel’s narrator voice can borrow and mould the common voice of a whole community of speakers, as a sort of choir, for instance, in a village or a small town, through the use of free indirect speech (erlebte Rede).

By following these stylistic clues, the article examines how comic, grotesque and fantastic effects are triggered in Hjalmar Bergman’s novel The Markurells of Wadköping, especially in case of ‘polyphonic’ scenes in which the small town participates as a unit, and as a receptive and collective conscience. When humour is in great style, it also contains a tragic dimension, as suggested by the philosopher Simon Critchley. Bergman’s humour is marked by pessimism, and the writer is ambivalent towards the apparently solid, bourgeois world prior to World War I which he comes from and depicts in his novel. The author feels close to this world and describes it with empathy, but at the same time he displays a critical distance as well as a need to part from it. The ‘polyphonic’ plurality of voices in this novel refers also to such an inner conflict. In the article, Hjalmar Bergman is considered as an interpreter of existential disharmony and shortcomings, but also as a writer who found in laughter a form of love for life despite everything.

Vilda pojkar, värde och varaktighet

2022-11-21T21:43:13+01:00

“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.

Kroppens mening

2022-05-05T22:07:38+02:00

“Embodied Meaning. Materiality, Representation and Money in La Peau de Chagrin, À rebours and Le Jardin des supplices”

This article presents readings of three French novels from the nineteenth century, namely Balzac's La Peau de chagrin, Huysmans' À rebours and Octave Mirbeau's Le Jardin des supplices. It examines issues of representation and meaning in relation to debt narratives and the use of bodies as a motif in relation to debt, and it argues that, in these novels, literary language and monetary representation displays parallel developments, exemplified through the shift from realist aesthetics to decadent literary style. The article ends by connecting a shifting representative function and related issues of meaning, to modern tendencies in literature, and the function of the human body in these narratives.

Den genomskådande blicken

2022-11-18T10:07:49+01:00

“The Perceptive Gaze. Theatricality in Rut Hillarp’s Blodförmörkelse”

This paper provides an analytical study of the self-dramatization of the female subject in Rut Hillarp’s 1951 novel Blodförmörkelse (Blood Eclipse) with a focus on theatricality as the foundation of the woman’s relationship with the world around her. With her male counterpart as the muse – the idealized object – the woman is the creator and work of her own story, an actress on her own stage, and through her conscious staging of reality she reintroduces certain social constructs as arbitrary. Building on previous literature on the novel, the author examines the evolution of the woman’s sense of selfhood using Stanley Cavell's notion of theatricality and Adriana Caverero's theory of the narratable self. Furthermore, the woman's theatricalization of being itself, where being appears as an act of self-representation that must be recognized by the other, is explored. Finally, by discussing how this is expressed in relation to the woman’s perception of self and the other, the role of theatricality in the woman’s journey through the inner unknown to the interpersonal is illustrated. Forever the other, the woman becomes a stranger – even in relation to herself.

Bildeboka som dobbelt teater

2022-11-21T21:21:31+01:00

“The Picturebook as Double Theatre. Art Motifs, Art Events, and Scenic Features in Two Picturebooks by Cecilie Løveid and Hilde Kramer”

How can the picturebook as medium establish itself as a theatre performance, with the reader as a participatory audience? Which possibilities does the picturebook hold in exploring the experience of art by placing the stage and the art event at the center of the storyline? These are the research questions in focus in this article on Cecilie Løveid and Hilde Kramer’s two picturebooks Lille Pille and lille Fille in The Deep Forest’s Theatre (Lille Pille og lille Fille i Den dype skogs teater, 1998) and Lille Pille and lille Fille in The Deep Forest’s Ballet (Lille Pille og lille Fille i Den dype skogs ballett, 1998). The article’s thesis is that these picturebooks work as double theatre: As well as dealing with announced stage performances on the thematic level, they also amount to stage performances in themselves, as the picturebook medium is employed in order to place the reader together with the literary characters in a theatre room. The analysis is inspired by theoretical insights from the research fields of picturebook, drama, and theatre. By drawing on and combining perspectives from different fields, the analysis aims at demonstrating the picturebook’s specific material and medial traits, as well as its openness towards other media and art forms. Furthermore, directing the analytical attention towards how the picturebooks are staged as a double theatre performance, also enables an unfolding of the fundamental questions about art and art experience that these books raise.

Poeter versus skådespelare i Dagens dikt 2020–2021

2022-11-07T13:02:19+01:00

“Poets versus Actors Reading Poetry on Swedish Radio 2020–2021”

Following the rise of the poet as the principal performer of his or her own work, in the second half of the 20th century, actors have been criticized for performing poetry as if acting on stage, or for focusing too much on conveying the lyric I. This primarily quantitative study investigates what prosodic differences there are between poets and actors reading poetry. The material consists of 276 readings from the Swedish public radio program Dagens dikt (The Daily Poem), from 2020 and 2021. A set of prosodic measures are produced for each recording with computational aid, and the groups are compared by using descriptive statistics. The differences found in terms of tempo and pausal patterns, though small, suggest that the actors read in a conventionally poetic, expressive style, while the poets are closer to a style typical of prose reading and conversational speech; this might be connected to differences between their respective repertoire – the poets reading newer, longer, and possibly more narrative texts. When it comes to pitch, there are more substantial differences: the poets are more monotonous and their tonal patterns more predictable, indicating a formal, less expressive style. These traits are associated with the highly stylized vocal cliché Poet Voice, which in turn is connected to poetological shifts in the last few decades. In both groups, however, younger individuals (born 1970 or later) and women, respectively, are the more monotonous and predictable; this might suggest a sociolinguistic trend not limited to poetry. Qualitative, close listening to a selection of readings largely confirms the findings of the quantitative investigation. While the frequently idiosyncratic poets tend to highlight form, such as rhythm and tonal repetitions, the actors rather try to convey the content of the poem, in accordance with prosodical and performative conventions.

Rapporter fra sykehuset

2022-10-04T17:29:08+02:00

”Reports from the Hospital. The Representation of Nurses in Tegnehanne’s Blod, svette og tress-is (2017) and Liv Bjørnhaug Johansen’s Den lange vakta. En historie fra et helsevesen på bristepunktet (2021)”

This article analyses how nurses are represented in two contemporary Norwegian texts: Blod, svette og tress-is (Blood, Sweat and Neapolitan Ice Cream), a hybrid of verbal and graphic narrative by Tegnehanne (2017), and Den lange vakta. En historie fra et helsevesen på bristepunktet (The Long Shift. A Story from the Health Sector at Bursting Point), a non-fiction text by Liv Bjørnhaug Johansen (2021). The analysis is based on a combination of close reading and a contextual perspective, for instance, on the public discourse about nurses. In some recent Covid-19-related newspaper articles, nurses are represented by using war metaphors and angel symbols. The two selected texts, in contrast, emphasise the nurse as professional actor and human being. Being a nurse is represented as a valuable and giving profession. Simultaneously, by featuring characteristics of the literary report genre, both works shed a critical light on working conditions in the care sector and their effects on the care worker. Thus, this article argues that the analysis of how healthcare professionals are represented in literature can contribute to the developing field of medical humanities by adding a more institutionalized perspective on (the treatment of) illness and the patient.

Mellan nationalekonomi och sociologi

2022-11-18T09:33:57+01:00

“Between Economics and Sociology. August Strindberg as a Social Scientist”

There is an extensive research literature on August Strindberg's multidisciplinary academic interests. Most Strindberg scholars tend to focus on his ventures into the natural sciences, and to a certain extent on his ideas with regard to humanistic disciplines such as history and linguistics. The social sciences, however, are generally neglected. In this article, an interpretation of Strindberg's social scientific thought is therefore developed. More specifically, this study outlines ideas relating to the social sciences, e.g., economics and sociology, in works such as ”Om det allmänna missnöjet, dess orsaker och botemedel” (1884), Bland franska bönder (1889), ”August Strindbergs Lilla Katekes För Underklassen” (1884), and En blå bok (1907–1912). Strindberg's social scientific discourse, the study argues, should be understood in the context of the polymathic aims that constantly pervade his literature.

Att göra klass. Nedslag i svensk samtidsprosa

2023-04-20T11:24:16+02:00

Besvärja världen. En ekopoetisk studie i Inger Christensens alfabet

2023-04-20T11:27:06+02:00

Ekokritiska metoder

2023-04-20T12:13:43+02:00

Lagerlöfs läsare. Allmänhetens brev till Selma Lagerlöf

2023-04-20T12:17:23+02:00

Parabeln i Stig Dagermans novellistik

2023-04-20T12:22:06+02:00

Under beredskap och krig. Nation, kön, främlingskap och våld hos svenska kvinnliga 1940-talsförfattare

2023-04-20T12:24:44+02:00

Mot en teori om Borealismen

2023-04-20T11:12:30+02:00

Svenska språket och litteraturen i Kraków

2023-04-20T11:18:03+02:00