This paper explores representations of the book and other media in some works by Dickens, Zola and Dos Passos. The aim of the study is to compare the aesthetic function of book and media representations in Dickens’ Little Dorrit, Bleak House and Great Expectations, Zola’s Germinal, Therése Raquin and Nana (or another title in the Rougon-Macquart series) and Dos Passos’ USA-trilogy. Because of the number of works involved, the paper is merely an inventory of occurrences and reflections on them. However, the parameters involved may be of use in constructing a model for further studies, and later comparisons will be made with Scandinavian ”class literatures” in the 1930s, in a wider research project. Firstly, I will interpret the occurrences of reading and the book from a temporal historical perspective, i.e. a sort of chronotopian way of looking at occurrences of reading and of what is read. Secondly, I will examine the differences between the book as a symbol and reading as a motif, or as thematic function, in Dickens and Zola in terms of message and aim (which could possibly be referred to as the perfomative aspect). Thirdly, the significance and symbolic value of the book in Dickens and Zola have been transferred to newsreels and documentary films in Dos Passos’ works. The paper concludes with a discussion of the shift in importance from the book to other media in fiction as exemplified in the three authorships.
This article deals with Emile Zola’s Germinal and Johan Falkberget’s An-Magritt, the first novel in the series Nattens brød, with a focus on the approach the two novels take to work and working-class literature. Drawing on theories of work and working, such as Schwimmer’s dichotomy identification and alienation, I explore working-class portraits of workers and their attitudes to work in the two novels. What views on work, workers and/or working-class literature are predominant? What forms of work are represented? What characterises work-related conflicts? How can the two novels be read in terms of the traditional criteria of working-class literature (Richard Steffen, Lars Furuland) and later definitions (Nilsson) when both novels resist any attempt to place them in either category?
Uncanny and Abject: Magical Thinking in the Works of Selma Lagerlöf and Carina Rydberg
This article utilises Freud's notion of "the uncanny" and Kristevas concepts of "abject" and "abjection" in their original meanings as tools in the analysis of certain aspects of Carina Rydberg's The Devils's formula (2000) and Selma Lagerlöf's Charlotte Löwensköld (1925) and Anna Svärd (1928). There are a number of surprising connections between these narratives in a broader intertextual sense. For instance, The Sundler, one of the protagonists in Lagerlöf's work, is at the outset of the novel scary because she seeems so manipulative, but her character escalates from this uncanniness into evoking stronger fears of abjection at the end of the narrative, while the narrator-protagonist Carina in Rydberg's work is in the outset of the novel marked by abjection, later undergoes a change in terms of subjectivation, but ends in scaring the reader through uncertainities typical of the uncanny.
Aksel Sandemose gav 1951-1955 ut en enmanstidskrift betitlad Årstidene. Den är i stora stycken ett slags publicerad publicistverkstad med recensioner, noveller, utkast som har publicerats tidigare eller som kommer att publiceras i Varulven (1958), Felicias Brullup (1959), eller, och framför allt, i Murene rundt Jeriko (1960).
Det finns all anledning att jämföra Årstidene särskilt med Murene rundt Jeriko. I senare sandemoseforskning har man börjat uppmärksamma Murene rundt Jeriko, både ur perspektivet sorgebok och ur perspektivet självframställning. Det finns anledning att också till detta koppla det stora intresse för naturen, som, förvisso inte är nytt hos Sandemose (En flyktning krysser sitt spor 1933, Fesjå 1936), men som är framträdande i Murene rundt Jeriko men också i Årstidene.
Vilken är Sandemoses gest när familjen flyttar till gården Kjörkelvik vid Dalvannet på Sörlannet några år innan tidskriften börjar publiceras? Finns i denna ett författarens performativa statement, som kan skönjas i de i perioden avsatta texterna? Finns där någon form av intertextualitet till Thoreaus Walden, då ju Sandemose hade stort intresse för amerikansk litteratur? Ligger här en tidig form av ekokritisk gest, eller är idén att flytta till Kjörkelvik en sedvanlig individualistisk idé, eller rent av instinktiv nyck, liknande många tidigare initiativ i Sandemoses liv?
This paper compares the notion of magic and magical thinking in Carina Rydberg’s novel Djävulsformeln [The Devil’s formula] (2000) and Selma Lagerlöf’s trilogy Löwensköldscykeln[The Löwensköld cycle] (1925-28). This comparison has historical and theoretical implications. In Lagerlöf’s trilogy the magic is attached to the main initiator of events, Thea Sundler, whose magical thinking is represented through a typical Boothian mode of showing. In Rydberg’s work the protagonist is telling the readers about her magical powers. Both writers relate magical powers to the motif of homelessness, which links it to the concept of das Unheimliche and Freudian ‘un-homely-ness’ is indeed foregrounded in these novels. Despite the difference in the representational modes of showing and telling, it is, as I will show, high time to extend Rydberg’s authorship beyond its present position in the tradition of Strindberg’s apologetic works to the Selma Lagerlöf tradition of great, and often, gothic narratives.
“An age that is slipping out and an age that is hastening in”: The value of literary sociological analysis in Lacemaker Lekholm Has an Idea by Gustaf Hellström and In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (“An age that is slipping out and an age that is hastening in”. Värdet av skönlitterär sociologisk analys i Gustaf Hellströms Snörmakare Lekholm får en idé och Ellen Glasgows In This Our Life)
This article presents a comparative study of two texts that are examples of largely forgotten works in terms of literary value and valuation: Snörmakare Lekholm får en idé [Lacemaker Lekholm Has an Idea] (1927) by Swedish writer Gustaf Hellström (1882–1953) and In This Our Life (1941) by American writer Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945). These two authors are radically different in many ways, for instance in terms of geographical outlook and positioning. Hellström was working as a foreign correspondent for many years, stationed in different parts of the world, and had an external, distanced view on Swedish society. Glasgow remained based in the American South throughout her career, and focused primarily on that setting in her novels even when she did travel. There are also significant similarities, not least in terms of the valuation of their work during and after their lifetimes. Hellström received De Nios Stora Pris in 1937, and Glasgow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1942, but both have been more or less forgotten later on. Both novels also offer a similar type of sociological analysis in the form of fiction tracing ideas, historical developments, and changing societies. The main literary function of the characters is to constitute various types, which enables a discussion of the ideas that they represent. The main function of families and generations is to represent historical changes. This type of novel of ideas fell out of fashion, which probably explains the devaluation in these two cases. Our comparative reading, based on Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s concept “contingencies of value”, allows us to investigate how this particular kind of sociological analysis in novels relates to literary history, literary value, and literary valuation. When these two novels can no longer fulfill their performative potential, they become more or less forgotten.
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.
Sigfrid Siwertz (1882–1970) var en av det svenska nittonhundratalets mest framgångsrika författare. Han publicerade ett sjuttiotal böcker och satt på stol fyra i Svenska Akademien från 1932 till sin död 1970. Boken vill spegla en författares uppgång och inträde i ett litterärt etablissemang som i och med den litterära modernismens framträdande i början av 1930-talet blev alltmer irrelevant. Den vill kasta ljus över ett författarskap och ett författaröde som numera inte uppmärksammas annat än marginellt och som har många motsvarigheter i litteraturhistorien. Siwertz fortsatte att vara mycket framgångsrik och lovordade men tappade kontakten med de nya generationerna av författare.
Bland de böcker av Siwertz som analyseras finns hans mest kända verk, men också andra aspekter behandlas. Hur står sig hans verk i ett genusperspektiv? Hur förhåller sig Mälarpirater till pojkboken som genre? Vilken roll spelade Siwertz som aktivist i samband med första världskriget? Hur arbetade Siwertz i Selambs i förhållande till den samtida verkligheten? Varför använde Siwertz antisemitiska schabloner? Vad utmärker Siwertz som reseskildrare? Hur behandlas konsumtionssamhällets framväxt i Det stora varuhuset? Hur förhåller sig Jonas och draken till bildningsromanen? Slutligen beskrivs hur Siwertz konfronterades av yngre författare i samband med hans angrepp på modernismen i inträdestalet i Akademien 1932.
Texten handlar om den roman där jantelagen formuleras, Aksel Sandemoses fiktiva psykoanalys eller självanalys, En flyktning krysser sitt spor (1933). I fokus står en process från ett rasande jag till ett mera integrerat subjekt, i Jacques Lacans mening. Att vilja berätta allt och inte lyckas, inte kunna lyckas, och att till sist acceptera en desillusionsinsikt, ligger i linje med Lacans språkteoretiskt baserade definition av hur ett subjekt blir till. Utblickar görs också till vad jantelagen summerar och hur den eventuellt varit verksam i senare tid.
The presence of Lewy bodies, mainly consisting of aggregated α-synuclein, is a pathological hallmark of Parkinson's disease (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). The α-synuclein inclusions are predominantly found in neurons, but also appear frequently in astrocytes. However, the pathological significance of α-synuclein inclusions in astrocytes and the capacity of glial cells to clear toxic α-synuclein species remain unknown. In the present study we investigated uptake, degradation and toxic effects of oligomeric α-synuclein in a co-culture system of primary neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. Alpha-synuclein oligomers were found to co-localize with the glial cells and the astrocytes were found to internalize particularly large amounts of the protein. Following ingestion, the astrocytes started to degrade the oligomers via the lysosomal pathway but, due to incomplete digestion, large intracellular deposits remained. Moreover, the astrocytes displayed mitochondrial abnormalities. Taken together, our data indicate that astrocytes play an important role in the clearance of toxic α-synuclein species from the extracellular space. However, when their degrading capacity is overburdened, α-synuclein deposits can persist and result in detrimental cellular processes.