The study of literature has traditionally been a qualitative scientific endeavour. Researchers have, generally, analysed few and canonised works, and these works have been examined in great detail, with “close readings” being the typical choice of method. Franco Moretti’s term “distant reading” and the rise of digital humanities and different sorts of text mining methods have, at least partly, changed this.

Moretti and his ilks in a way turned the scholarship of literature upside down by focusing units much bigger or much smaller than singular works of literature: “devices, themes, tropes – or genres and systems”, as Moretti put it. Instead of reading the most well-known works of a specific period or genre it was suddenly possible to read almost all literature published and draw other sorts of conclusions (though this also meant handing over much of the reading process to computers).

Most literary scholars engaged in text mining have used very large data corpuses. The general rule seems to have been “the bigger data, the better”. This is certainly true when it comes to showing statistical patterns etcetera. However, the bigger the material, the longer is also the distance between the machine-generated results and the qualitative analysis of these results. If your corpus consists of thousands of books it is simply not possible to know the content of this corpus very well. This is at the same time the strength and the weakness of the text mining research on literature conducted in recent years.

In my opinion, debates about pros and cons of text mining methods in the study of literature have been far too black and white. Instead of either or (big data or canonised work, distant reading or close reading) I argue for a position in between. My field of study is contemporary Swedish crime fiction. In an on-going study I use a corpus of 116 Swedish crime fiction novels published 1998–2015 and written by the most well-known and commercially successful authors of this period of time. Hence, I do not analyse the entire genre, yet not only the most renowned novels within it, but instead around ten per cent of all Swedish novels published in this period (the top decile). This choice makes it possible to both get the bigger picture and be very familiar with the material.

Moreover, I approach this corpus through a combination of methods, where some are computer aided and digital (word frequencies, topic modelling), others more traditional and analogue (shallow thematically-oriented readings of the entire corpus). Together these methods provide solid knowledge of the genre that is both quantitative and qualitative.

In my presentation I argue that such a combination of methods on semi-big data or corpuses can be very fruitful to many literary studies, with material from different epochs and genres. Literary scholars should start to make use of this “space between” the very distant and the very close, and let computer-aided methods serve as a helping hand rather than a goal in itself.

Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy is part of a global hypercanon of popular fiction and thus a major commercial enterprise. In the translation of these works, the author and translator are joined by a host of shadowy figures—the source language publisher, scouts, literary agents, target language publishers, editors, and proofreaders—who transform the texts for a particular readership. This essay connects the market-oriented metamorphosis of paratext with substantial alterations to literary content itself. It is based on a computational study of the novels in Swedish and English that singled out major alterations to paragraph meaning and length across the three novels. The study showed that about 6.3% of the paragraphs have been cut or shortened by at least 30%. These extensive changes reveal a process of creative remaking, in which published works become raw content to be reshaped by commercial expectations and the demands of high production speed.

The paper explores differences between bestsellers in print and the most popular audiobooks ina subscription-based streaming service for books (“beststreamers”) by means of computationalstylistics. The point of departure is the complete set of print bestsellers and digital audiobookbeststreamers for the Swedish book market 2015–2019, in total 172 novels. We probed 34linguistic measures to track differences between subsets at the stylistic level. The results indicatethat there are pronounced differences between the formats. Print bestsellers are longer,syntactically more complex and varied, and seem to focus more on depiction. Beststreamingaudiobooks, by contrast, are shorter, more straightforwardly written, and appear to highlight plotand dialogue. The results are replicated when the comparison is restricted to crime fiction, themost prominent genre in the commercial top segment. Given these results, it is argued that it ispossible to discern a particular audiobook style as one factor affecting book consumption indigital formats, and conversely that the printed format is associated with other stylistic preferences.

Karl Berglund, Department of Literature, Uppsala University

Mats Dahllöf, Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University

Jerry Määttä, Department of Literature, Uppsala University

Apples and Oranges? Large-Scale Thematic Comparisons of Contemporary Swedish Popular and Literary Fiction

The aim of this article is to compare thematic trends in contemporary Swedish bestselling and literary fiction with the help of a computational method—topic modelling—which extracts content themes based on statistical patterns of word usage. This procedure allows us to identify trends and patterns that are not easily discovered through manual reading. We track topics in two subsets of Swedish fiction from the period 2004–2017: 1) prose fiction on the Swedish bestseller charts, and 2) prose fiction shortlisted for the August Prize (arguably the most prestigious Swedish literary prize). The results confirm several assumptions about contemporary popular and literary fiction, such as more plot-focused themes in popular fiction and themes more connected to settings in literary fiction. But the outcomes also provide new, and more surprising knowledge, such as food and economy being the most biased themes among the non-crime fiction bestsellers, whereas themes concerning nature are most biased in the literary realm. Moreover, themes relating to sex, intimacy, and violence are biased towards literary fiction rather than popular fiction. In the light of our findings, we argue that both popular fiction and literary fiction seem to be characterised by certain thematic attributes that make it relevant to discuss them as genres also on a textual-thematic level.

The report provides raw listings of the results of topic modeling experiments, intended for readers interested in taking a closer look at these. Explanations and discussion are found in the main article: “Apples and Oranges? Large-Scale Thematic Comparisons of Contemporary Swedish Popular and Literary Fiction” published in the journal Samlaren, 2019.

This dataset contains bibliographic records of (in theory) all translations of Nordic crime fiction for adults, written in any of the five main Nordic languages (Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish) and published in translation during the period 2000–2020. The dataset is delimited to include only first edition translations published in print book form. 

Streaming services for audiobooks and ebooks have grown rapidly in recent years. The shift in consumption patterns has transformed both reading and publishing. One visible change is the attraction and importance of backlist titles. The article investigates how the relationship between frontlist and backlist in the bestseller segment has developed, and discusses the shift in the power balance between the two. By examining large-scale consumer behaviour data (6.23 million streams) from one of the key players in subscription-based digital bookselling – Storytel – we track book consumption both in detail and at a structural level. Our results show that backlist titles are increasingly important for bestselling authors who continue to publish frontlist titles, especially for fiction written in series. Streaming services foster new types of book consumption behaviour thanks to a combination of technology, media, reading habits, and social change. 

By departing from the Nordic countries, the purpose is to explain and conceptualize how subscription-based streaming services for books operate in the contemporary book trade, and furthermore to discuss what effects these new business models are causing regarding the production, distribution, and consumption of books. A model is proposed that outlines the aspects of streaming services and the relationships to other actors involved. The model illustrates how streaming services affect the entire chain of publishing, and influence the constitution of books in contemporary digital culture. Since audiobooks are by far most popular, the production get altered to suit this format. Streaming services themselves also act as publishers, which makes them powerful. Distributional aspects are both more complex and more important in streaming services than in traditional book retailing. When consumption is transferred to digital platforms, the distributional frame and the final product converge, and consumer data becomes a key source of information.

Denna uppsats undersöker tre utgåvor av det medeltida manuskriptet DG 11 som publicerades under 1600- och 1700-talet. Manuskriptet DG 11 är ett av de fyra viktigaste manuskripten av den prosaiska Eddan och är troligen mest känt som Uppsala-Eddan. De utgåvorna av Uppsala-Eddan som undersöks i denna uppsats är Edda-citat ur Olaus Verelius kommentar till Gautreks saga, Jon Rugmans avskrift (R 683) och den första tryckta utgåvan av Uppsala-Eddan av Johan Göransson. Syftet med denna uppsats är att få inblick i hur 1600- och 1700-talets vetenskapsmän förhöll sig till ett medeltida manuskript. Frågorna som står centrala i denna uppsats är vilken av dessa nya versioner av Uppsala-Eddan som mest liknar det ursprungliga manuskriptet och hur dessa texter avviker från DG 11. Alla avvikelser från manuskriptet delas in i kategorier och diskuteras i detalj. Det avslöjar vilka processer (såsom normalisering) som spelade en roll när en ny utgåva av ett medeltida manuskript publicerades under 1600- och 1700 talet.

This article offers an exploratory quantitative analysis of the conceptual career of climate in US English over the period 1800–2010. Our aim is to qualify two, closely related arguments circulating in Environmental Humanities scholarship regarding the concept’s history, namely that we only started to think of climate as a global entity aft er the introduction of general circulation models during the final quarter of the twentieth century, and, second, that climatic change only became an issue of environmental concern once scientists began to approach climate as a global model. While we do not dispute that the computer revolution resulted in a significantly new understanding of climate, our analysis points to a longer process of singularization and growing abstraction starting in the early nineteenth century that might help to nuance and deepen insights developed in environmental history.

Författare beskrivs ofta som ensamma skapare till sina verk. I många fall finns det dock betydligt fler som medverkar i produktionen av ett litterärt verk, däribland förlaget. I fallet med svenska författarna Harry Martinson och Moa Martinson är det sen tidigare vederlagt att de båda hade ett utbyte med sina förläggare på Albert Bonniers förlag och att de på olika vis fick råd och ändringsförslag gällande sina texter av sina förläggare Karl Otto Bonnier, Tor Bonnier och Kaj Bonnier. Uppsatsen undersöker på vilka vis förläggarna fungerar som medskapare genom att undersöka kommunikationen i brev mellan författarna och förläggarna gällande författarnas olika manuskript under perioden 1928–1939. Uppsatsen utgår från flera frågeställningar och undersöker mönster i förläggarnas kommunikation och deras synpunkter på författarnas manuskript, hur dialogen ser ut mellan de olika parterna samt vilken funktion förläggarna kan sägas ha i produktionen av de litterära verken, allt som allt i syftet att bidra till förståelse för hur relationen mellan de två yrkesgrupperna kan påverka produktionen av ett litterärt verk fram till dess att en originalutgåva publiceras. Av analysen framkommer det att det finns ett flertal mönster i förläggarnas kritik som berör allt från språket, innehållet och formen, manuskripten i relation till den tänkta mottagaren, förlagets angelägenheter samt vänskapliga relationer mellan författare och förläggare. Trots att förläggarna refuserar båda författarna vid ett flertal tillfällen ser relationen mellan dem olika ut och på så vis skiftar även kritiken från förläggarna och författarnas respons. Bland annat Harry Martinson och Tor Bonnier utvecklar en särskild vänskaplig relation, medan Moa Martinson förmodligen anser sig åsidosatt och att hennes författarskap inte tillskrivs lika stor vikt av förlaget. Harry Martinsons får även något mindre omfattande förslag om ändringar från förlaget och med tiden dessutom mer frihet, medan Moa Martinson in i det sista ombes göra omfattande ändringar och även av andra skäl, så som att hon måste göra ändringar för att hennes innehåll inte anses passande. Båda författarna visar tacksamhet för de kommentarer de får av förläggarna på sina manuskript men är till en början inte alltid villiga att göra ändringar, även om de i slutändan väljer att göra som förläggarna önskar för att på så vis kunna publicera sina verk. Uppsatsen konstaterar att förläggarna framför allt kan ses som medskapare i den litterära produktionen på så vis att de med sina kommentarer är med och formar författarnas åsikter om hur god litteratur ska skrivas och på så vis påverkar deras skapande i det långa loppet.

Streaming services are creating significant shifts in Scandinavia, with audiobooksdistributed through subscription-based services accounting for about a quarter ofsales in the Swedish and Norwegian book markets. In this study we ask: What arethe common and diverging themes of trade talk on audiobooks and streaming ser-vices in Sweden and Norway? Our findings indicate that trade talk in the two coun-tries differs distinctively. The differences suggest that discussions over audiobooksand streaming form two quite distinct discourses: A business and innovation dis-course which is dominant in Sweden and a cultural policy discourse which is domi-nant in Norway.

This paper explores topic modeling (TM) as a tool for “dis- tant reading” of two Swedish literary corpora. We investigate what kinds of insight and knowledge a TM-based approach can provide to Swedish literary history, and which methodological difficulties are associated with this endeavour. The TM is based on 12- and 24-term chunks of selected verb and common noun lemmas. We generate models with 20, 40, and 100 topics. We also propose a method for a quantitative and qualita- tive gendered thematic analysis by combining TM with a study of how the topics relate to gender in characters and authors. The two corpora contain, respectively, Swedish classics (1821–1941) and recent bestsellers (2004–2017). We find that most of the topics proposed by the TM are easy to interpret as conceptual themes, and that the “same” themes ap- pear for the two corpora and for different TM settings. The study allows us to make interesting observations concerning different aspects of gender and topic distribution.

Uppsatsen har som mål att se hur läsningen av Kurt Vonnegut kan kompletteras med ekokritiska perspektiv. Som ämne valdes hot mot planeten och det undersökta materialet var fyra av Vonneguts böcker: Player Piano (1954), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Slapstick (1976) samt A Man without a Country (2005). Böckerna undersöktes utifrån frågorna: Har det tidigare i Vonneguts författarskap förekommit hot mot planeten? Vilka är i sådana fall dessa hot och vilka är aktörerna bakom hoten? samt Hur framställs hoten och hur har hoten och framställningen förändrats från Vonneguts debut till hans avslutande roman? Undersökningen visade att det genom hela Vonneguts författarskap har funnits ett tema som säger att livet som levs är ohållbart. Det tar sig form i olika hotbilder mot planeten. Dessa hot består fram för allt i konsumtion av fossila bränslen, västerländsk kultur och människans natur. Den primära förändringen mellan böckerna är att Vonnegut skiftar mellan att lägga skulden på människans natur och västerländsk kultur. Framställningen går också från att vara processdriven till att domineras av direkt anföring. Vonnegut går även från ett extra-heterodiegetiskt berättande till ett intra-homodiegetiskt. Samtidigt blir stoffet allt mer personligt.

This article explores if conversations about literary texts that thematize abortion can provide new knowledge about the clinical everyday practice of midwives. The empirical material consists of conversations with seven clinical midwives after shared reading of a sample of fictional and biographical Swedish texts from the 1930s, 1950s, 1990s and 2010s. Drawing on theories of power relations, gendered knowledge and narrative medicine, the article investigates the relationship between the texts and the midwives’ professional experiences. The study demonstrates that the participants agreed on the positive effects of reading and discussing literary texts related to their professional work. The study cannot establish that it has provided new knowledge about the midwives’ clinical practice; it concludes, however, that the shared reading and conversations generated an exchange about experiences of abortion care that subsequently could deepen knowledge about treatment and practice within the profession. The study demonstrates that the reading experience generated discussions about the clinical practice that otherwise would never have taken place, for the participants asserted that the conversations had given time for reflection about medical, social and emotional issues that did not occur in clinic. The texts brought specific professional experiences to the fore and offered new perspectives on norms, practices and the professional role. One distinct impression conveyed by the participants was that shame is still a salient feeling among the patients, signaling that abortion is still a sensitive subject. The article concludes that similar elements of reading and discussing literary texts could prove an important part of (continuous) training for professional midwives.  

Litteraturen intar en central plats i kulturen och samhället. Den är ständigt föremål för värdering och bedömning av olika individer, institutioner och andra aktörer på det litterära fältet. I "Litterära värdepraktiker. Aktörer, rum, platser" tar sig fem litteraturforskare an den utmanande uppgiften att beskriva och förstå den komplexa värderingsprocess som omger litteraturen. Genom konkreta fallstudier av Bokmässan i Göteborg, ett antal bokhandlar i Malmö och Lund, en grupp storläsande kvinnor samt Umeå stads novellpris, ger "Litterära värdepraktiker" en mångfacetterad bild av hur olika aktörer både skapar och upprätthåller litteraturens värden."Litterära värdepraktiker" är den andra större studien inom ramen för det av Riksbankens Jubileumsfond finansierade projektet "Att förhandla litterärt värde". Den första studien, "Höstens böcker. Litterära värdeförhandlingar 2013", utkom 2015 och följde värdeförhandlingsprocessen kring tjugo skönlitterära verk utgivna hösten 2013. Författarna är forskare i litteraturvetenskap vid Lunds universitet, Göteborgs universitet och Linnéuniversitetet.