This study primarily investigates the role of children in regard to the plot as well as to the characterization of adults in six novels by Hans Fallada. Discussed is furthermore Fallada's position as an author within the literary epoch of the "Neue Sachlichkeit", especially regarding his narrative technique that includes a dominating use of dialogue and a covert narrator. Due to the fact that Fallada's first successful novels, written in the early thirties, reflect the contemporary German society not excluding its social problems, the critics for a long time regarded the author as a critical observer of society, thereby disregarding other aspects of his work, such as the characters and their individual conflicts. These aspects were not seriously taken into consideration by the critics until the sixties.

The appointed texts are dealt with chronologically, thus facing the role of children from various angles and thereby concerning themes such as the marital relationship, the animosity between generations and conflicts aroused by the pubescent child. An unborn child as well as the longing for or the loss of children are all matters that noticeably influence the plot and the characterization of adults in these texts.

By investigating the role of children in these novels I will show, that in Fallada's texts there is a power leading towards the sheltering family and also that this power is combined with heavy demands upon ethics.

This study is an interpretation of Goethe´s epistolary novel "Die Leiden des jungen Werther" ("The Sorrows of Young Werther") from the perspective of psychoanalysis, in particular object relations theory (ORT). On the one hand, it attempts to investigate which fantasies, conflicts and emotions in the text are treated and manipulated by the author. On the other hand, it tries to establish how these fantasies, conflicts and emotions, particularly the latent sense of the text, can be recognized, manifested and interpreted by the reader. In this effort, a number of methods are used, including both traditional text analysis and psychoanalytic methods adapted to the study of literature - above all counter-transference analysis. These methods are combined principally with psychoanalytical object relations theory, especially Donald Woods Winnicotts concept of the transitional object, in order to examine and explain subjectivity as an instrument of perception in psychoanalytical textual interpretation. With the same goal in mind, certain aspects of the author's life are explored. An overview of psychoanalysis as applied to literature, as well as an introduction to various psychoanalytical theories (such as narcissism, borderline and suicide theories), are presented for the benefit of readers without a basic knowledge of psychoanalysis.

The main part of the study focuses on the interpretation of the novel "Die Leiden des jungen Werther", in particular on the interpretation of the character of Werther. By means of counter-transference it is established that the search for a self-identity and the longing for a mother are created in the literary imagination of the author and together form the central fantasy of the text. The intense preoccupation with object relations and transitional phenomena in the text proves that its underlying structure is predicated on the dialectic of rigid boundaries and limitless emotions. Against the backdrop of a growing proximity-distance conflict in the text, the author's unconscious vision of coalescence can be shown to exist in the humiliation and separation experienced by the character of Werther. Finally, the point is made that at the end of "Die Leiden des jungen Werther" this vision of coalescence in the literary imagination of the author is fulfilled in the fictitious hereafter of the text.

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate in what various ways dedicated intermediaries tried after the Second World War to re-establish literary relations between Sweden and Germany and to show in what respects these middlemen succeeded or failed. Publication figures, archive material and interviews throw light upon the development. In the process the importance of translators, publishers and literary critics becomes very obvious, but what is equally obvious is the extent to which their decisions are influenced by non-literary elements forming a cultural climate which determines the development.

A culmination in the development is represented by Swedish contacts with the West-German group of writers called "Gruppe 47", which - backed by strong economical and political support in Sweden - located in 1964 their annual meeting to the city of Sigtuna near Stockholm. The main source of information about the meeting is a complete radio recording of the session, but contemporary newspaper reports and an inquiry based on a questionnaire have also been used to throw light upon events. Literary critical and group dynamic viewpoints were given considerable weight when analyzing this material. The Swedish and German literary critics differed not infrequently when assessing the texts presented at the meeting. One area of common ground was found, however: the appreciation of experimental prose.

In spite of a favourable cultural "climate of reception" the meeting of 1964 had little impact in the long run on the position of German literature in Sweden. Since on the other hand such a climate hardly exists at all for Swedish literature in Germany it is no wonder that the spreading of information about Swedish literature in the Federal Republic has been uphill work, with the exception of e.g. Per Olof Sundman and Lars Gustafsson. The concluding excursus treats of these writers and tries to demonstrate some of the elements that have brought about their success: they were not considered exotic but fitted well into German "expectation frames", thus gaining strong support from influential literary critics.

The present study investigates the translation of dialectal elements in literary texts from the German and Swedish linguistical and cultural areas. Translation theory generally advises against the translation of dialectal elements in standard language texts thereby implicitly questioning their creative and communicative function. The aim of the study is to investigate to what extent the dialectal elements in the source text are translated by corresponding dialectal elements in the target text thereby promoting a "cultural transfer" or whether a translation method based on translation theory is used.

The linguistic material from the novels Die Räuberbande by the German author Leonhard Frank, Tjärdalen by the Swedish author Sara Lidman and Kapten Nemos bibliotek by the Swedish author Per Olov Enquist is microanalyzed. In doing so, the phonetical-phonological, morphological and syntactical dialectal features in the three source texts are treated methodically and are exemplarily and systematically presented together with their translation variants in the target language. The study focuses mainly on the translations of dialectal lexicology, which is investigated according to its contrastive function regarding the translations of standard language, thereby examining its adequacy. By including all the dialectal lexemes appearing in the works and their translations empirical dates have been compiled as a result of the translation methods.

The study´s analyses demonstrate that dialectal elements are mainly translated into standard language, that a large part of dialectisms is paraphrased and that a small part is rendered by spoken language without regional limits. A tendency towards increasing use of dialectal elements through the times can be detected as well as a propensity to adapt the translation to the stylistical preferences in the receiving country. Thus, "cultural transfer" is not promoted.

This study investigates, theoretically and empirically, the role of animacy in the development of gender systems. The theoretical background is a grammaticalisation approach to language change. Concerning gender, this presupposes that classifications begin as semantic distinctions in the realm of animacy with flexible, contextually based agreement between the gender-marking elements. This kind of gender is called contextual gender. In the course of time, these classifications will spread into other areas, they become desemanticized and the agreement relation grammaticalizes into one of government where the inherent gender of the head noun controls the gender of the agreeing elements, irrespective of contextual factors When this leads to a great number of violations of the principles of contextual agreement in the realm of animacy, a new cycle of semantic classification will begin, creating layers of classifications. For German and Swedish two different layers are discerned respectively.

The empirical starting point of this project was the observation of two opposite developments in the area of female person reference in Germany and Sweden. As a consequence of feminist critique of language, mainly targeted at the use of socalled masculine generics, in Germany the use of female gender-specific nouns increased substantially, the major means being female derivation with –in, so-called motion. Although similar means for female derivation exist in Swedish, i.e. -inna and -ska, the number of derivations used is decreasing.

In order to isolate socio-cultural and historical facts from language-internal mechanisms behind the diverging tendencies, a historical sketch of the development of equal rights, of language criticism and of the development of the female suffixes is drawn for the respective countries. It is obvious, that the German strategy to achieve gender-fair language use is established by making women visible by means of motion, while in Sweden the use of gender-neutral forms for a long period of time has been regarded as a sign of equality. This ‘neutral’ use of former masculine and male-specific forms has been made possible by the merging of the two nominal genders masculine and feminine into uter (Sw. utrum).

A contrastive study of comparable German and Swedish newspaper texts shows that the lack of motion in Swedish is partly compensated by composition and attribution with gender-specific lexemes. Still, the 64% gender-specific noun phrases in Swedish cannot compare with the 95% in German. But the use of gender-specific forms for well over half of the person references calls into doubt the general opinion shared by most Swedes that Swedish has a gender-neutral person reference system. Linguistic asymmetry persists as long as gender-specification is restricted to one half of the gendered population, whatever the means for specification.

The almost exclusive use of gender-specific forms in German is seen as indicative of a grammaticalisation process. Haspelmaths invisible hand explanation of grammaticalisation is used to show how the development of -in in German fulfils just about every requirement on a grammaticalisation process – language-external as well as -internal – while -inna and -ska neither are promoted sufficiently by the speech community nor does there exist a paradigm that could accommodate them. In contrast to Swedish, where the suffixes remain strictly derivational, it is demonstrated that -in is turning into an inflectional marker. The German gender sub-system for person reference is developing into a semantically based system with genderflexible person denominations.

A study of the pronouns agreeing with non-personal-agents in a parallel corpus of EU-documents shows that other aspects than purely referential or formal ones impinge on the choice of agreement forms. Non-personal-agents in certain contexts expose both agency and intentionality, which turns them into suitable agreement partners for animate pronouns. In Swedish, all animate pronouns are sexed, leaving a “Leerstelle” for these inanimate but agentive and intentional referents. In German, this problem is covered by the polysemy of the personal pronouns. Non-personal-agents are shown to be one possiblesource for the spreading of a linguistic innovation from the realm of animacy into inanimate contexts via semantic and thematic roles that share important features with animates proper.

The last study makes use of different types of German monolingual corpora in order to investigate the agreement between inanimate nouns with female inherent gender – from non-personal-agents and abstracts to concrete nouns – and agent nouns which can potentially expose agreement by female derivation. Although the results are rather heterogeneous, they allow the formulation of the hypothesis that agreement is more likely to occur with nouns for which a metaphorical bridge to stereotypical conceptions of femininity can be constructed and that key collocations with high frequency such as die Kirche als Trägerin or die DNA als Trägerin der Erbinformation contribute significantly to the spread of the agreement pattern.

The present dissertation investigates literary translation from a cultural perspective by comparing the translation of culture-specific words and concepts in five different translations of the novel Ein weites Feld by Günter Grass. The translations were chosen to represent three ‘small’ (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian) and two ‘large’ (American English, French) languages and cultures, in order to find out whether these categories are characterized by different ‘foreignizing’ or ‘domesticating’ translation methods. The main purpose of the study is to present an empirical and descriptive analysis of the concrete difficulties and possibilities connected with the process of transferring culturespecific words and concepts taken from the geographical, historical, literary and everyday context of the original work. A further aim of the study is to undertake a comparison of theory and practice of translation with regard to culture and culturespecific words.

The methodological framework is taken from the historically oriented ‘Transfer’ method of the Göttingen literary translation school, where deviations from original literary texts are not seen as ‘mistakes’ in the traditional linguistic sense but as differences caused by various historical and individual factors. Above all, this study aims to focus on the translations themselves, to investigate what different solutions to cultural translation problems can tell us about the meeting between the ‘Foreign’ and the world of the translators and their prospective readership.

The study’s analyses demonstrate that culture-specific words and concepts in this material are translated in a broad variety of ways, which often differ from translation to translation and therefore cannot be classified into predictable categories of translation 'strategies’. A certain pattern could be detected as far as the translation of geographical place-names and similar concepts were concerned, where the Scandinavian translators tend to preserve the original words and concepts to a greater extent than the other translators. As a contrast, the American and French translators have preserved a large number of words connected to the ‘Third Reich’ in the original form, which raises questions about the way strategies of preserving the ‘Foreign’ in translations are connected with the picture of other cultures. However, the most conspicuous result of the investigation could be found within the category of the ‘pragmatic’ decisions (Chesterman), which differ considerably in all translations as far as explanations of culture-specific phenomena within the text itself are concerned. Thus five literary translations make five different variations of the same novel. The heterogeneous translation solutions further show that the theoretical approaches within translation theory are of only limited use for describing existing literary translations in an adequate way.

The present dissertation investigates the use of the fantastic and its functions in contemporary prose, the initial hypothesis being that the fantastic is not historically exhausted, but continues to be productive. The major part of this study consists of a close reading of four novels printed between 1995 and 2001: Marie Hermanson’s Värddjuret (1995), Majgull Axelsson’s Aprilhäxan (1997), Karen Duve’s Regenroman (1999) and Elfriede Kern’s Schwarze Lämmer (2001). Tzvetan Todorov’s definition of the fantastic as structural ambiguity is fundamental to the dissertation. In order not to bind the definition to a normative concept of genre, the fantastic is in this study considered as a narrative strategy.

The dissertation’s analyses demonstrate that in these contemporary novels there is considerable variation of narrative devices, as well as of intertextual motifs deriving from the ‘archive’ provided by the tradition of the fantastic. The fantastic is to a great extent intertextual, but does not merely function as a “signal of fiction” in a postmodern game where ambiguity is no longer relevant. Instead, the narrated world in these novels is characterized by a deeply-rooted ambivalence, heterogeneity and instability. Both attractive and dangerous, the fantastic corresponds to a meeting with “the other” and the unknown, while dampening the conflict between the supernatural and the natural so clearly seen in Todorov. What is central is not the crisis of perception undergone by the novel’s characters as they choose between two opposing views of reality, but their mental state of mind. These characters are in a condition of “betwixt and between”, which in all four novels is linked to the theme of the artist. Via the fantastic, Regenroman initiates a confrontation with male myths of the artist and images of women.

Schwarze Lämmer also engages the romantic fantastic tradition and investigates the link between adolescent delusions of grandeur and artistic creativity. Värddjuret, on the other hand, depicts the genesis of a female artist, while Aprilhäxan presents the female artist’s monstrous image of herself and fantasies of omnipotence. An additional function of the fantastic in these four novels is to thematize a concept of reality that is based, not on the contrast between the natural and the supernatural, but on the possibility of several different realities.

Auf der Grundlage von Schillers Text wird versucht, in sieben Kapiteln (430 S.) zu zeigen, daß Schillers Erstlingswerk fast ausschließlich auf einer Reihe von Vorlagen und Vorbildern aufgebaut ist und das Schauspiel eine Struktur aufweist, die durch ihre Symmetrien sowie den dreifachen Gebrauch der harmonischen Teilung nach Harmonie strebt, der Dichter sich also bereits zu diesem Zeitpunkt auf dem Weg zum 'klassischen' Drama befand.

Die Hypothesen der Arbeit stützen sich auf die Behauptung, daß Schiller sowohl zwei historische als auch zwei literarische Vorlagen benutzt sowie die äußere Struktur einer der Tragödien Shakespeares in sein Werk übernommen hat.

Die erste literarische Vorlage besteht aus Christian Daniel Schubarts Erzählung Zur Geschichte des menschlichen Herzens und bildet den Kern der Hauptfabel des Schauspiels. Der Einfluß dieser Erzählung ist wohlbekannt und wird deshalb in der Arbeit vernachlässigt.

Die erste historische Vorlage sowohl zu Schubarts Erzählung als auch zu Schillers Schauspiel gründet sich auf eine Tragödie, die sich in Wirklichkeit innerhalb eines der fränkischen Adelsgeschlechter in den 1720er Jahren abspielte und unter der Bezeichnung die Akte Buttlar bekannt wurde. Auch der Zusammenhang zwischen dieser (historischen sowie geographischen) Vorlage ist bereits früher diskutiert worden. Neu ist, daß ich diese Vorlage in Schillers Text allem Anschein nach freilegen konnte. Schiller beschreibt im Text deutlich sowohl topographische Einzelheiten wie auch das Schloß, in dem sich ein Teil der Handlung abspielt. Ich versuche zu zeigen, daß die Einzelheiten in Schillers Beschreibung mit den lokalen Gegebenheiten auf Schloß Altenmuhr in Franken und dessen Umgebung übereinstimmen. Auch die übrigen drei Schauplätze haben wirkliche Vorbilder und stehen zusammen mit dem Schloß in Franken in einem besonderen Verhältnis zueinander, indem sie eine mit Hilfe der harmonischen Teilung konstruierte geometrische Figur bilden.

Die zweite historische Vorlage scheint in Verbindung mit Schillers Schauspiel bislang unbekannt zu sein. Damit gemeint sind die Hussitenkriege zwischen 1419 und 1434, die durch Feuertod des Prager Reformators Johannes Hus 1415 auf dem Konzil zu Konstanz ausgelöst wurden. Schiller hat dabei nicht nur die Figur des Taboritenhauptmanns Jan Ziska sowie Ereignisse wie z.B. die Schlacht bei Taus 1431, sondern auch eine Reihe von Einzelheiten in sein Schauspiel übernommen. Durch den hussitischen, von fast unvorstellbaren Greueltaten durchzogenen Hintergrund handelt Schillers Drama letzten Endes von einem blutigen Aufruhr gegen die institutionalisierte Kirche und deren Machtansprüche, Hand in Hand mit der Unterdrückung Böhmens seitens des deutsch-römischen Kaisers Sigismund.

Diese Vorlage (die, wie auch die übrigen Vorlagen, sich hinter Allegorien und anderen sprachlichen 'Manipulationen' verbirgt) bildet die Räuberfabel, also den Hintergrund zu jenem Teil des Stücks, der von dem Räuberhaufen und seinem Hauptmann Karl Moor handelt.

Weder die Vorlage der Hussitenkriege noch Schubarts Erzählung reichen indessen aus, um die Handlung des Stücks auszufüllen. Der 'Kollaps' der ersten literarischen wie auch der ersten historischen Vorlage fällt mit einem Punkt gegen Ende des ersten Teils des Schauspiels zusammen, an dem nach Schillers eigener Aussage der Handlungsverlauf 'erlahmt'. Für den weiteren Handlungsverlauf wählte Schiller als zweite literarische Vorlage die Handlungsstruktur einer Erzählung aus der Literatur, die zur Zeit der Entstehung der Räuber außerordentlich populär war, nämlich Aladdin und die Wunderlampe aus 1001 Nacht in der europäisierten, französischen Übersetzung Antoine Gallands. In der Arbeit wird untersucht, wie Schiller Strukturen und Einzelheiten dieses Märchens seinem Werk angepaßt hat; - nicht nur die Aktantenrollen (Greimas), sondern auch die in den Räubern vorkommenden Orte der Handlung wie auch die Struktur der Handlung stimmen von einem gewissen Punkt an mit Teilen der Aladdin-Erzählung überein.

Die Arbeit soll außerdem zeigen mit welchem Geschick Schiller es verstanden hat, diese vier Vorlagen miteinander zu verweben und gleichzeitig solche Symmetrien einzubauen, auf die in der Arbeit des öfteren hingewiesen wird. Zu seiner Hilfe beim Zusammenfügen hatte er indessen das Szenengerüst von Shakespeares Richard II. als eine fünfte 'übergreifende' Vorlage, ein Gerüst, das er zusamen mit Shakespeares Ortsbezeichnungen seinem Drama zugrundegelegt hat. Dabei veränderte er die Symmetrie der Vorlage auf eine solche Art und Weise, daß das Szenengerüst an einem zentralen Punkt harmonisch geteilt wird, und zwar jener Stelle, an dem die historische Vorlage in die fiktive übergeht und damit den zweiten Teil des Schauspiels einleitet.

Die Arbeit legt aber auch die moralisch-ethische Quintessenz des Werkes frei: Schiller läßt den Protagonisten zur Besinnung kommen und sich der Justiz stellen. Dabei ist es jedoch notwendig, den religiösen Hintergrund sowohl des Schauspiels als auch Schillers, der in einem streng pietistischen Heim aufgewachsen war, zu kennen sowie zu wissen, daß gerade dieser Pietismus während des 18. Jahrhunderts die Lehre des Kirchenvaters Origines über die Wiederbringung der unsterblichen Seele des gefallenen Sünders aktualisierte. So tritt dann die unsterbliche Seele zuletzt als der eigentliche Kern des Stücks zutage. Wie bekannt, arbeitete Schiller gleichzeitig mit den Räubern an seiner medizinischen Examensarbeit über das Verhältnis zwischen dem göttlichen Anteil der Seele und dem tierischen oder - wenn man so will - mit dem teuflischen. Dieses Verhältnis geht dann auch explizit aus dem Text hervor, genauer gesagt aus einem 'Gedicht', das in der umgebenden Prosa 'versteckt' liegt. Dort gibt Schiller schließlich auch das Verhältnis zwischen diesen beiden Teilen der Seele genauer an, denn die eine der vier Zeilen dieses Gedichts, in der Franz Moor im Zusammenhang mit der unsterblichen Seele von 'Symmetrie und Schönheit' redet, ist nach der goldenen, harmonischen Teilung, die J. Keppler die göttliche nennt, konstruiert.

Die Untersuchung befaßt sich ebenfalls mit der Charakteristik von Gebäude- und Landschaftsszenen des Stücks sowie dem Verhältnis der Figuren der Handlung untereinander und deren Bewegung in Zeit und Raum als auch mit der Frage, inwieweit die Handlungen verschiedener Szenen parallel spielen bzw. mit welchen Mitteln Schiller solche Simultaneitäten erreicht.

Die Entstehung der Räuber fällt in die Übergangszeit zwischen dem auslaufenden Barock und der Klassik bzw. dem Klassizismus und gleichzeitig in den Grenzbereich der Aufklärung und ihrer literarischen Reaktion, dem Sturm und Drang. Man kann dieses Schauspiel als ein Panorama sehen, das, zusammengesetzt aus Geschichte, Literatur, religiösen und philosophischen Gegensätzen usw., die Menschen jener Zeit auf verschiedene Weise berührte.

This work provides a survey of Dutch literature translated into Swedish between 1830 and 1995 in order to investigate the mechanisms and selection criteria that determined the reception given this literature in the Swedish literary field.

The introduction briefly sketches intercultural relations between Sweden and the Low Countries until 1830. The second chapter traces the growth of Dutch as a subject in Swedish universities, and Dutch literature in Swedish reference works, literary histories, cultural publications, radio and television. To the extent that rules of secrecy have permitted, the Nobel Prize candidacies of Dutch and Flemish writers have also been examined. The third chapter provides a commentary on the appended bibliography of translations from Dutch into Swedish during the period 1830-1995. Tables indicate distributory percentages of translated works as regards men and women, Dutch and Flemish authors, or adult literature, children's literature and comic strips. A consideration of number of translated titles per author and works with the greatest number of editions allows us to determine the types of literature most sought after. A division into quality categories, presented in tabular form, indicates the relative distribution of translations from 1830 to 1995 into entertaining works and quality literature, respectively. The fourth chapter investigates the reception of five Dutch post-war authors in Sweden, based on analyses of book reviews and reader interviews.

It becomes clear that medieval trade links between Scandinavia and the Low Countries had a linguistic impact, one that subsequently inspired Scandinavian philologists interested in Nordic languages, English and German to investigate Frisian, Low German and Dutch, as well. As a result, by the turn of the century Swedish university students of German were being taught Middle Dutch and Modern Dutch, as well. At the same time, Dutch influence on 17th-century cultural life in Sweden had become of major interest to cultural historians. The Dutch literature translated during that century was primarily moralistic and didactic, but during the latter half of the 19th century, translations began to appear of a more entertaining nature - historical novels and stories about the common people of the Netherlands and Flanders. In Swedish book reviews, these texts were frequently compared to Dutch painting. By the end of the 19th and early 20th century, translations included novels dealing with contemporary matters, such as the womens question, the peace movement and social issues such as socialism and colonialism.

A small group of academics and literary specialists were by then working for a literary Nobel Prize for the Dutch part of the world. Nevertheless, the translations produced during 1920-1950 were primarily a question of entertaining literature. During the 1930s more translations began to appear of literature for children and adolescents, a movement that intensified during the 50s, so that today such areas account for more than half of the literature translated from Dutch.

From the 1930s until her retirement in 1961, the Dutch foreign lecturer Martha A. Muusses played a central role for Swedish awareness of serious Dutch - although not Flemish - literature. During the 60s, deliberate Dutch and Flemish economic commitments produced an increase in the amount of serious literature translated from Dutch to Swedish. By the 70s this shift was facilitated by the growing number of enthousiastic translators, backed up by informative articles written by Dutch and Flemish professors. They were driven not least by the desire to see the Nobel Prize in literature at last go to a work in Dutch. Moreover, new enthousiastic supporters from the heart of the Swedish literary world would join them in the 80s and 90s.

Although the Swedish translations from Dutch still contain large elements of children's literature, anti-war tracts, works of social criticism, literature about the situation of women, and works dealing with the lives and customs of the people in the Netherlands and Flanders, a noticeable shift has taken place towards the type of literature appreciated by literary critics - nor is this latter type without its appreciative readers in the public at large.

In sum, the reception of Dutch literature in Sweden from the 19th century to 1995 has primarily shifted from literature of a moral and religious nature, via a literature of entertainment, to a more serious literature, a shift in wich the commitment of translators and Dutch and Flemish cultural intermediaries, together with economic support, has played a crucial role.