The dissertation explores the notion 'romantic story' as a literary device in three Swedish late modernist novels: Eyvind Johnson's Romantisk berättelse (1953) (Romantic Story) and Tidens gång. En romantisk berättelse (1955) (The Passage of Time. A Romantic Story), Lars Gustafsson's Poeten Brumbergs sista dagar och död. En romantisk berättelse (1959) (The Last Days and Death of the Poet Brumberg. A Romantic Story), and Sven Delblanc's Kastrater. En romantisk berättelse (1975) (Castrati. A Romantic Story). The study consists of three parts, one on each novel.

In part, the dissertation turns around the word 'romantic' and the historical period designated by this name; and addresses the topic of what the term has come to mean in a period of late modernist aesthetics. In part, it is an investigation of the three novels as 'romantic stories', i.e. a study of the generic properties of the novels, and also of the novel as a literary genre. By the very nature of the study the approach is ecclectic, encompassing interests in paratextuality (chapters 2, 5, 10), narratology (chapter 3), autobiography (chapter 4), hypertextuality and intertextuality (chapters 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12), literary form (chapter 9), literary genres (chapter 10), as well as the relation between the literary work and the historical and cultural context that it is possible to construct around it (chapters 4, 6, 12, 13). However, the focus of the study always remains on the texts and how they work, making use of close reading as a strategic means of teasing out meaning and reference.

The dissertation concludes with a chapter in which the three novels are looked at as group and from the point of view of the internal histor(icit)y of Modernism.