Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, was in the early 20th century a multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual city with a diversity of writing systems. It was also an important and influential hub for international trade and politics, for Europe and the Western world. This essay is part of the research programme World Literatures – Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamicsat Stockholm University. It aims to demonstrate how the vernacular (the local) depends on and interacts with the cosmopolitan in literary works on Constantinople during the decades around 1900, with a focus on Scandinavian languages and nationalities. For analysis and discussion I have chosen one poem in Danish by J. P. Jacobsen (1870), and travelogues and short prose texts in Swedish by Birger Mörner (1906) and Stéphanie Beyel (1919), and in Norwegian by Knut Hamsun (1903; 1905). Yuri M. Lotman’s concept of the semiosphereis used in combination with Eric Hayot’s study On Literary Worlds (2012) in order to explore the worldmaking capacity of the selected literary works – that is, how literary worldsare created as immanent aspects of literature. It is demonstrated that the literary world of Constantinople cannot be defined as either peripheral within a Western semiosphere or central within the Ottoman semiosphere. Rather, the city functions in these literary works as a threshold between East and West, or as the multilingual, intermediating and ambivalent border between the semiospheres, characterised by its simultaneously separating and uniting features. Unexpected connections between the vernacular elements of the cosmopolitan city are established. The literary world of Constantinople is not only portrayed in the languages of Scandinavian readers; their languages are also a part of the Constantinopolitan multilingual mix.
In this article, the aphorisms of Klara Johanson (1875–1948) are related to the history of the genre. I argue that her aphorisms should be examined in the light of the romantic aphorism and be considered as a contribution to aesthetics. The etymology of the term ”aesthetics” – sensuous perception – foregrounds the body, as does the earliest uses of the term ”aphorism” (Aphorismoi was the title of Hippocrates’ famous compendium of medical propositions and recommendations). The meaning of the term was later transferred from medicine to other disciplines, most notably politics, drawing on the analogy of the relation between the health of the physical body and the health of the state (connected by the theory of the four humours). Of course, by the beginning of the 20th century, that theory was no longer valid. However, the connection between the body and the state had endured, and was now understood in terms of the romantic concept of the ”organism”. Johanson’s aphorisms unite these two aspects: the body as sensuous perception and the body related to the state. According to Gerhard Neumann’s definition, the form of the romantic aphorism is a representation of conflict between abstract, mathematical truth, and personal, sensuous truth. This conflict informs Johanson’s aphorisms, although her modern take on the romantic conflict was more in line with the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, whose works Johanson introduced and translated into Swedish. In his view, aesthetics should precede logic, since individual perception precedes any understanding of a pure concept. I argue that Johanson’s aphorisms constitute a political statement, situating the individual truth at the centre of experience, and defending the need to take personal differences into account in order to heal the social ”organism” of society. To think with all your senses is to accrue historical knowledge; an aesthetic method with political implications.
Historical Narratives and Contemporary Sweden in Theatre for Young Audiences. Eyewitnesses as Trauma-Drama. Children’s theatre in Sweden has a tradition of working with various political, social and existential issues. The purpose of the article is to explore the potential of children’s theater to stage an inclusive Sweden, with an empirical starting point in the theatre production Eyewitnesses. In Eyewitnesses, Young Malmö City Theatre wanted to bring to life testimonies from the Holocaust, in a city that is known for having extended problems with contemporary anti-Semitism. Eyewitnesses is based on true life stories and aimed at a young audience aged 13-18. The article examines wether Eyewitnesses has the potential to contribute to increased intercultural understanding and respect for human rights, focusing on the emotions that the performance evokes. In the article, I employ theories about cultural trauma and trauma-drama, and focus on the dramaturgical choices that are made, and the young audience’s reception. The article’s empricial basis consists of performance observations, audience observations, and interviews with the young audience. The article shows that Eyewitnesses not only has the potential to function as a historical narrative, but reflections are also awakened about contemporary social traumas and sufferings. At the same time, a discrepancy in the image of contemporary Sweden is revealed. Some informants highlight Sweden as an equal country characterized by freedom, while others identify issues of racism and segregation. From this perspective, three different images emerge: one where racism is seen as something that primarily happens outside Sweden's borders, one that highlights segregation and that we live in a racist society, and finally a third, which is also the dominant one, where critical reflection on current issues of inequality is sparked from the encounter with the theatre performance. In this way, Eyewitnesses has the potential to function as a trauma-drama, depending on the emotions that the performance evokes.
Barnlitteratur och barnkultur har i alla tider skapats och formats i en dynamisk relation till samtida publikationsformer, teknologier och medier. Detta är också utgångspunkten för temanumret "Barnlitteratur och medier", där barn- och ungdomslitteraturen undersöks interdisciplinärt och utifrån olika litteraturvetenskapliga, mediehistoriska och intermediala perspektiv.
In the last novel of the Parade’s End-series, Last Post (1928), Ford Madox Ford depicts the aftermath of the First World War, and the cataclysmic social, cultural, and material changes it caused, from the perspective of the Tietjens brothers’ rural home in South East England. The novel’s position in the tetralogy has often been questioned, as its setting as well as form differs significantly from the previous three novels. However, as this article will show, the novel also offers Ford’s most substantial examination of the consequences of war. This article looks at the importance of things in Ford’s depiction of post-war reconstruction, arguing that by foregrounding furniture and other domestic objects as a thematic concern, Ford seeks to evade a homogenising narrative of reconciliation and patriotic celebration. The novel participates in a modernist rejection of empirical, objective representation, where things rather than events serve as nodes of reference for the psychological as well as material transformations of the Post-War period.
This article argues that the various conspiracy theories surrounding the Swedish Academy scandal constitute historical parables. Clichéd representations of the 18th century came in handy in the public debate, especially when Katarina Frostenson and Horace Engdahl refuted the accusations of sexual abuse aimed against Frostenson’s husband, who was called the ”cultural gure.” Focusing on the writings of and interviews with these two members of the Swedish Academy, three main tropes are found: ”The Revolution,” ” The Conspiracy,” and ”The Libertine.” Concluding remarks point out that historical parables and the idea of ”similarity” between past and present presupposes the past as an immovable entity possible to continually revisit, even though the past only exists in our interpretations of it. However, the opposite concept of static ”difference” between past and present is not satisfactory either, but since theory of history tends to be locked in a dichotomy of either ”similarity” or ”diiffrence” the article finally suggests perspectives inspired by postcolonial and queer theory in order to transgress this contrariety
Artikeln analyserar "motståndet mot teori" i svensk litteraturvetenskap från 1970-tal till 2000-tal med utgångspunkt i Horace Engdahls avhandling Den romantiska texten. Med utgångspunkt i Paul de Mans tes, att den verkliga teoridebatten inte är den som förs mot teorins motståndare utan mot teorins egna premisser, driver artikeln tesen att 1980-talets teoridrivna svenska litterautrvetenskap rymmer en död vinkel, det förhållandet att det språkliga tecknets materialitet även inrymmer en historicitet. En teoretisk tradition som öppnar sig för denna aspekt, och som därför bör tillföras den svenska litteraturforskningen, är diskursanalysen.
Med anledning av en återpublicering av en äldre artikel av förf. i TfL:s jubileumsnummer diskuteras teorins ställning i ämnet. Artikeln ifrågasätter den etablerade föreställningen om teorins kritiska karaktär och argumenterar istället för att den, historiskt sett, snarare har haft en legitimerande funktion inom ramen för den kris och kritik-dialektik som präglat svensk humaniora i stort sedan 1970-talet. Frågan reses om litteraturvetenskapen som kritiskt projekt idag är överspelat och om nya legitimeringsstrategier måste sökas inom ett förändrat kuskapspolitiskt paradigm.
Artikeln problematiserar det samtida litteraturbegreppet utifrån ett medie- och publikhistoriskt perspektiv. Utgångspunkt för diskussionen är Sven Anders Johanssons Litteraturens slut (2021)
Walt Whitman took an interest in Swedenborg's life and works and referred to him in published and unpublished writings. In his old age he observed: ‘I find Swedenborg confirmed in all my experience. It is a peculiar discovery’.
Review of Erik Ingvar Thurin's thesis for a doctorate in English at Lund University, The Universal Autobiography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, published by Gleerup in the series Lund Studies in English, ISSN 0076-1451, No. 46 (1974); ISBN 91-40-03491-7.
The Country Life Novel’s gothic machinery. National Identity and Fluctuating Exchange Value in Fredrika Bremer’s Life in Dalecarlia
When Fredrika Bremer in her novel I Dalarne (1845) (Life in Dalecarlia) represents Falu copper mine as the horri c ruin of classic gothic tales: a vast and life-threatening void, the home of dreadful crimes and secret passions, this is paradoxically part of a nationalistic literary strategy. Simultaneously, though, the novel writes the nation as a pastoral on country life and mores of the peasantry. The article investigates how the gothic and the pastoral idyllic respectively establishes the nation and national identity on their separate terms and in relation to each other in accordance with their own particular inner logic.
The idyllic streaks both manifests and problematizes local place as foundation for national identity, while the gothic exposes identity as arbitrary, and thereby subverts the notion of a citizen subject. This duality is linked to a market-based model of identity which the article argues is actualized by the novel itself. The condition of possibility is the emerging consumer society and the beginnings of industrialism, which the novel also thematises as tradition versus modernity. At stake in this eld of tension between the idyllic and the gothic stands the nation as a community of citizens: a collective subject.
An Economy of Seduction: On Consumption in Fredrika Bremer’s Famillen H*** and Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s Araminta May.
This article discusses consumption in Fredrika Bremer’s Famillen H*** (1830−31) and Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s Araminta May (1838), it is also considering the function of “seduction” in enticing a potential readership. Despite the differences between these two novels, this article argues that both are permeated by a commodity-logic, which manifests itself in the relation between seductive visibility (exchange value) and labour (use value). The bourgeois world of things made visible in the literary text is described as an effect of a fetishizing of the object due to commodification. In considering the texts in this way, this study also presents a new perspective on early realism. The article aims to show how the novels both speak of their economic “conditions of possibility”, where the fast growing literary market is one condition, and the way in which these novels seek to sell themselves on this market, by means of literary strategies. With a focus on “seduction” the central concern of this article is what literature does rather than what it means.