Volume 122, 2001

Olle Widhe, The Voice of the Shepherdess. Some Aspects of Pastoral in the Poetry of Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht.

From the very outset critics have spoken of the subjective nature of Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht's (1718–63) poetry. This essay explores the connection between this subjectivity and the conventions of pastoral. Taking my cue from Paul Alpers' What is Pastoral? (1996), and focusing on the shepherdess' strength relative to her world, I open up for a reinterpretation of Nordenflycht's subjectivity. Modal analysis helps us to understand the construction of subjectivity in Nordenflycht's poetry but it also provides us with an important instrument for dealing with the different types of pastoral in her works.

Dag Hedman, The Battle in the Gustavian Field II. Kellgren's problematic attitude towards Leopold.

The Essay deals with the two most renowned writers of the Swedish Enlightenment, Johan Henric Kellgren (1751–1795) and Carl Gustaf Leopold (1756–1829), and their problematic contacts. The study is partly inspired by Pierre Bourdieu's field theory, and uses some of his terms as tools for the analysis. The decade-long struggle between Kellgren and Leopold is seen in a sociological light, rather than from an aesthetic point of view, as has traditionally been done by Swedish scholars. Both writers were fighting for a position in the cultural field surrounding King Gustavus III (1746–1792), and thus were bitter enemies, later reluctantly united against common enemies, foremost the writer and philosopher Thomas Thorild (1759–1808).

Karin Wilson, The source of C.J.L. Almqvist's Lappish poem.

This paper discusses the source of the Lappish words in a poem written by Carl Jonas Love Almqvist. The poem forms a part of Almqvist's voluminous manuscript Om svenska rim which was composed during Almqvist's years in exile (1851–1866). Om svenska rim has not yet been published in its entirety.

Almqvist calls the poem a "Dictionary poem" (Ordboks­poem) and it contains 175 Lappish words. The text indicates an informant—"Miss Engelmark"—as the contributor of the Lappish words. This theory is dismissed in the paper. Instead it is argued that Almqvist has used Johannes Schefferus' Lapland, the London edition from 1704, as his source. This issue of Lapland is available at the Library Company in Philadelphia where it has been part of the librarys collection since 1807. It is known that Almqvist during his eleven years in Philadelphia often visited this library. All the words appearing in the poem can be found in Lapland. An ortographic peculiarity regarding one of the words in the poem matches an error in the proofs found only in this specific edition of Lapland.

Conny Svensson, Hedenvind and Boccaccios kock (The Cook of Boccaccio).

It is here argued that in the novel Boccaccios kock (1954) by the Swedish author Gustav Hedenvind-Eriksson the narrative strategy aims at creating expectations as to literary genre, which are never fulfilled. Thus, the prelude offers obvious associations to the classical historical novel in the tradition of Walter Scott, but then historical illusion is abandoned by means of anachronistic allusions to the author's own time. Existential questions concerning life and death are formulated as in a philosophical dialogue, but answers are never provided in the conversations. Instead this novel turns out to be an Allkunstwerk combining different genres, and also a metaliterary text about itself and conditions of literature in general. Paradoxes frequently recur; events are timeless as well as time-bound, man is immutable and changeable at the same time. The title of the novel suggests this double nature of man being earth­bound like the cook but also a dreaming visionary like Boccaccio the poet.

Lotta Lotass, "Beyond all horizons are islands": Stig Dager­mans "Upptäcktsresanden" in relation to August Strindberg's cartography and Sven Hedin's geography.

Stig Dagerman's drama "Upptäcktsresanden" ["The Explorer"], first published in 1947, is one of the author's least known works. In the few extant studies of the drama, it has chiefly been compared to Bertolt Brecht's Die Ausnahme und die Regel (1930), a play with which it partly shares its setting, situation and, to some extent, its political standpoint. But Dagerman's drama is not primarily, as Brecht's, didactic. We find instead that the symbolism of discovery itself is at the base of many of the play's discussions and actions.

In my paper I have chosen to read "Upptäcktsresanden" in the light of Stig Dagerman's criticism of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin. In 1945, at the end of the second world war, Dagerman voiced strong criticism against Hedin and questioned his membership in the Swedish Academy, after Hedin had expressed his admiration for Germany in general and Adolf Hitler in particular. This criticism is, in my view, an undercurrent in the play "Upptäcktsresanden".

In seeking arguments for his fictional critique of the great desert traveller, Dagerman looks to August Strindberg, an author who has left a significant imprint on Dagermans body of work. Strindberg and Hedin were, in one of the Strindberg-feud's more heated debates, involved in a fierce battle of words regarding who was the first to discover Lop-nor and the Tarim basin. Strindberg's interest in the matter stemmed from his find, while working as a librarian at Kungliga Biblioteket in Stockholm in the 1870s, of the war prisoner Johan Gustav Renat's map of the area, drawn in 1738. This map became Strindberg's foremost weapon in the ensuing battle with Hedin.

The fight between the two national monuments is fought with ever harder words and tends more and more, and almost unnoticeably, to revolve around the meaning of the word "discover". For Strindberg the word connotes untrodden land and never before seen views. For Hedin it is more a question of mapping and measuring. Strindberg therefore sees Hedin not as a discoverer, but as a mere land surveyor dressed in an adventurer's suit. Hedin sees himself, not surprisingly, as Lop-nor's first true chronicler.

At the same time as Dagerman, in fictional form, continues along the lines of Strindberg's criticque in discussing the concept of "discovery", his play can also be read as a critique in its own right, even as a 'countertext' to Hedin's monumental works on his travels. Here a critique of imperialism and the white man's sovereignty over the undeveloped country's inhabitants becomes obvious.

The play's discussion of exploration and mapping also allows for a reading of it as an allegory of writing. One might think that the explorer, in such a reading, would become the writer's alter ego. But in Dagerman's text the camel-driver is the character who can be said to give voice to the role of the author. When he, at the end of the play, kills the explorer, the different threads of the play have, to some extent, come together in a singular point. For Dagerman the role of the author was clear—to be subversive and a champion of liberty. So the camel-driver/author becomes the one who puts the critizised Sven Hedin to death, thereby overthrowing the imperialist power. At that point the play has performed the acts it speaks of.

Cecilia Lindhé. Worlds in Collision: A Study of Kerstin Ekman's Novel Gör mig levande igen.

Kerstin Ekman's novel Gör mig levande igen (1996) [Make me Alive Again] is a rewriting and continuation of Eyvind Johnson's Krilon-trilogy (1941–43). This essay addresses the different challenges which Ekman's novel makes to Johnson's trilogy. It is argued that these challenges do not simply take the shape of a confrontation of the male perceiving subject, but appear also as a questioning of literary traditions in the wider sense. Through these challenges Gör mig levande igen manages not only to give a voice to women but also transgresses conventional female representation. Exploring the novel's intertextual relationship with the traditions, conventions, and genres that constitute it, Gör mig levande igen is revealed to be a contradictory novel working within the system it attempts to destabilise. This essay shows how the novel re-evaluates the distinctions and boundaries that mark the idea of a hegemonic subject and a literary canon by undermining boundaries that run between worlds of different ontological status. These worlds, that consist of reality/myth, fact/fiction, and original/imitation are set in motion and collide, opening up a structure that strives toward closure. By highlighting these collisions together with the oscillation between epistemological and ontological dominants, between literary modernist techniques and postmodernist devices, it is possible to see how Gör mig levande igen works to open up a closed structure thus making room for women's perspectives.